Creating a Praxis of Psychology in TESOL through Teacher-led Research

Understanding the importance of language learners’ psychological experiences with respect to engagement, motivation, anxiety, among other issues, has been gaining importance in TESOL (see Mercer et al., 2016; Spratt, 2017). Individuals’ lived experiences are situated within multiple contexts such as the classroom, the school, the community, and broader social and political contexts that inform stakeholders' experiences in TESOL classrooms. As such, psychological experiences are not isolated within an individual’s mind but are connected to issues beyond the classroom such as language policies, ideologies, social injustices, and issues that impact diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in language education. TESOL International Association’s Research Professional Council (RPC) aims to inspire research engagement, productive dialogues, and collaboration among different stakeholders through teacher-led, participatory, and classroom-based research. Such dialogues contribute to developing praxis – reflection and action with the aim of transformation (Freire, 2005a), which involves language teaching professionals’ reflections and actions that aim to transform their practices and can contribute to the understanding of learner psychology as it is lived and experienced. In this session, the presenters will report on the embeddedness of language learner psychology in their context-specific praxis through practitioner inquiry