Research Activities

Introduction — My professional ‘home’ is in language teacher education for TESOL with specialisms in interculturality, and researcher competence (including narrative inquiry). In a spirit of reflective and reflexive practice, my research activities flow out of my professional identity, i.e. I am an educator reflecting on and exploring the continuing development of the educational practices with which I am involved. My main areas of current research activity are as follows:

(1) Exploring post-TEFL paradigms

• Fay, R., Lytra, V. and Ntavaliagkou, M. (2010). Multicultural awareness through English: A potential contribution of TESOL in Greek schools. Intercultural Education, 21(5), 579-593.

Given the complexities of the global English language phenomenon, the complexities of the contexts in which TESOL practitioners work, and the complexities of the societies in which such teaching takes place, I believe it is timely to consider what paradigms there are in addition to the more familiar TEFL, TESL, and so on.

The above article explores such complexities in the context of the increasingly multicultural character of some schools in Greece. Maria Ntavaliagkou is an alumnus of our MA TESOL programme now undertaking her PhD at Leeds University.

(2) The professional intercultural competence of TESOL practitioners:

• Fay, R. and Davcheva, L. (2007). The development of language teachers’ understandings of intercultural communicative competence: A Bulgarian distance learning case study. In M. Jimenez Raya and L. Sercu (eds.), Challenges in teacher development: learner autonomy and Intercultural competence. Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang. (pp.191-212).
• Fay, R. and Davcheva, L. (2005) Developing professional intercultural competence: Reflections on DL programmes for language educators, and translators/interpreters in Bulgaria. In B. Holmberg, M. Shelley and C. White (eds.), Languages and distance education: Evolution and change. Clevedon, Multilingual Matters. (pp.140-165.)

I believe that being a TESOL practitioner is, by definition, being an intercultural practitioner, dealing with otherness oneself, and through language education, helping others to deal with it. This is the basic rationale for my MA course unit “Language Education as Intercultural Practice” (EDUC70040 LEIP).

In long-standing collaboration with my Bulgarian colleague Leah Davcheva – with whom I have developed interculturally-focused distance learning courses for language teachers, translators and interpreters – I have been exploring for some time the professional intercultural communicative competence of language professionals such as TESOL practitioners and how such competence develops through distance learning programmes. The above chapters report on this exploration.

(3) The intercultural dimension of TESOL and French language teaching:

• Fay, R. and Androulakis, G. (2011). The intercultural dimension in language teaching: perspectives from the teaching of English and French Research Papers in Language Teaching and Learning, 2(2), 62-73. http://rpltl.eap.gr/index.php/en/current-issue/54
• Fay, R. and Androulakis, G. (forthcoming). Differing conceptualisations of interculturality: Reflections on the experience of English and French language teacher educators in the Greek context. In M. Beaumont and T. Wright (eds.), Experiences of second language teacher education. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

As detailed below (in the section on appropriate distance learning methodology), I have had the great fortune to be closely connected with the Hellenic Open University (HOU) in Greece from its inception in 1996. The HOU licensed Manchester’s MA TESOL distance learning materials for its own MA TEFL programme. It also has parallel MA programmes for Teachers of French and German as a Foreign Language.

My colleague, George Androulakis, is closely associated with the French programme for which, amongst other things, he co-wrote the intercultural module for which I was a critical reader. As we collaborated, we became increasingly intrigued about the differences as well as similarities in the ways in which the fields of TESOL and Teaching French as a Foreign Language approached the intercultural area. In some ways, although such differences and similarities are directly focused on the intercultural dimension of the language teaching concerned, they also point to more general differences and similarities between these disciplinary fields. In sum, why does TESOL often differ from TFFL in its concerns and approach?

(4) Conceptualising ‘interculturality’:

• Zhou, X. and Fay, R. J. (2009). Exploring intercultural communication using Holliday’s small-culture approach: The case of (some) Chinese students in a particular English-speaking   university context. Paper presented at the 8^th China Association for Intercultural Communication (CAFIC) Conference, June 1th-14^th 2009, Beijing, China.
• Zhou, X. and Fay, R. (2011). Using a small-culture narrative approach to explore intercultural communication: A departmental approach and a Chinese-focused case study. Paper (to be) presented at the Linguistics Salon at Peking University, Beijing, 25th April, 2011.

A key part of my intercultural thinking is informed by the work of Adrian Holliday whose discussion of the dangerous essentialism inherent in much intercultural discussion I find to be persuasive. Instead, following his lead, I prefer to use a ‘small culture approach’ as I did in my own PhD thesis.

(5) Exploring the research process:

In this research area, there are three distinct strands as discussed below:

(a) intercultural focus on the supervision experience

• Davcheva, L, Byram M. and Fay, R. (forthcoming, 2011). Zones of interculturality in postgraduate doctorate supervision. In F. Derwin, A. Gajardo A. and Lavanchy, F. (eds.), Politics of interculturality. Cambridge Scholars Press, Cambridge.

As indicated above, I have major interest in the developing researcher competence of TESOL practitioners, but the above chapter takes a different focus – that of the supervisors’ experience of working with international doctoral students, a phenomenon increasingly common in an age of educational internationalisation, and a phenomenon especially common in TESOL departments. The above chapter, led by long-standing collaborator Leah Davcheva, reports on our narrative inquiry exploration of the supervision process as an intercultural site.

(b) narrative inquiry

• Fay, R. (2008). The complexities and affordances of narrative in research texts: Developing narrative awareness with experienced teachers on postgraduate programmes. Paper presented at Narrative Matters: ‘Storying our world’, May 2008, Toronto, Canada.
• Fay, R. (2004). Stories of Emergent Cultures of Distance Learning and Collaboration: Understanding the CELSE-Hellenic Open University Project. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Manchester, School of Education, University of Manchester.

My interest in Narrative Inquiry (NI) as a research approach first developed through my doctorate. Since then, I have developed research methods training inputs in this area at both Masters and doctorate levels, attended and given papers at a number of narratively-focused conferences. Four of my recent / current doctoral students employ a narrative approach in their research. This is a particularly dynamic aspect of my current work, e.g. the ongoing collaboartive research with Leah Davcheva into the Ladino understandings of Sephardic Jews in Bulgaria:

• Davcheva, L. and Fay, R. (2011). Linguistic identity-play amongst Sephardic Jews in Bulgaria: A narrative study. Paper (to be) presented at the Language, Identity, and Intercultural Communication joint conference of the British Association for Applied Linguistics Intercultural Communication Special Interest Group and The Annual Bloomsbury Round Table, 9^th – 10^th June, 2011, Birkbeck College, University of London).

(c) undertaking (TESOL) research bi- / multi-lingually

• Fay, R. Zhou, X. and Liu, T-H. (May, 2010). Undertaking narrative inquiry bilingually against a monolingual backdrop. Paper presented at “Narrative Matters 2010 – Exploring the narrative landscape: Issues, investigations, and interventions” hosted by the CIRN in Fredericton, May 20th – 22nd 2010, New Brunswick, Canada.

In a group such as our LTE group which attracts TESOL practitioners from many parts of the globe, in terms of the student research activities, there arises a fascinating and rarely discussed set of methodological possibilities resulting from the students’ own bilingualism and the affordances this has for their own research. For example, they can generate and analyse data in languages other than English, i.e. in a language more appropriate for them, their research participants, and for their context. But, Manchester is essentially an English-medium institution, so the challenge comes when these student-researchers have to present their (bilingual) work in English for examination purposes.

This is a dynamic area of my work involving both studies of this kind (e.. the Ladino narrative research with Leah Davcheva mentioned above) and PhD and MA supervisions (including the PhD studies explored in the above paper in which we explore this DRM area through supervisor / supervisee reflections on the Mandarin-English data / analysis in the doctoral studies by Xiaowei Zhou and Tzu-Hsuan Liu.).

Further, in July 2010, we held an exploratory seminar on this DRM theme in conjunction with Professor Mike Byram and his PhD students working bilingually at the University of Durham, UK. From that, several new line sof activity have begun including: a proposed BAAL 2011 colloquia and a special issues of the International Journal of Applied Linguistics.

(6) Intercultural evaluation of educational materials:

• Fay, R. and Davcheva, L. (2005). Interculturalising education in Bulgaria: The contribution of the national helpdesk for intercultural learning materials, Intercultural Education, 16 (4), 331-352.

Over the years, I have had the great fortune to be involved with a number of intercultural projects in Bulgaria as co-ordinated by my long-standing collaborator Leah Davcheva. One such project was to develop an intercultural evaluation tool and process for school textbooks across the curriculum. This above article reports on this project and presents the evaluation model developed through it.

(7) Computer-mediated intercultural communication:

• Fay, R., Katsarska, M. and De Stefani, M. (2009). Computer-mediated intercultural communication: Changing trajectories of developing communicative competence. Paper presented at the International Association for Intercultural Education (IAIE) / the Hellenic Migration Policy Institute (IMEPO) conference Intercultural education: Paideia, polity, demoi, 22nd – 26th June, Athens, Greece.  

Given the educational technology and intercultural specialisms of the LTE group, the Computer-mediated intercultural communication (CMIC) area represents an obvious area of collaboration. My work in this area involves LTE colleagues Diane and Susan but also collaborators in Bulgaria (Milena Katsarska), Germany (Rachel Lindner), INdonesia (neny Isharyanti), Slovenia (Vida Zorka) and Uruguay (Magdalena De Stefani), Magdalena is an MA alumnus now undertaking her PhD with us. Rachel and Vida are all MA alumni. To date, research activity in this area has resulted in conference papers but a book proposal is planned as well as several articles. It is an area of work which is dynamic at this time.

(8) Appropriate distance learning methodology:

• Fay, R. and Hill, M. (2003). Educating language teachers through distance learning: The need for culturally-appropriate DL methodology, Open Learning, 18 (1), 9-27.

From 1996-2004, I co-ordinated a project through which the newly-established Hellenic Open University in Greece commenced its activities with an MA TEFL programme based on distance learning materials licensed from Manchester’s MA TESOL programme. This project experience became the focus of my narratively-based doctoral thesis completed in 2004. It also sparked my interests in the area of appropriate DL methodology, an extension of my thinking in the area of appropriate TESOL methodology as explored through the ‘intercultural’ course unit on the MA TESOL programme.

Written by: Richard Fay on 16, December 2009.
Last revised by: Richard Fay on 10, April 2011.