Humanistic Pedagogies and EFL Experiments

This paper argues that all research should be based on humanistic pedagogies with educational functions. While conducting research associated with issues of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL), researchers should pay attention to whether the samples have also been well educated. This study...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors Lin, Grace Hui Chin, Chien, Paul Shih Chieh, Jarvie, Douglas S, Purcell, John Anthony, Perkins, Lawrence Larry
Format Report
LanguageEnglish
Published 25.04.2012
Subjects
Comparative Analysis
Educational Research
English (Second Language)
Ethics
Experiments
Foreign Countries
France
Grade 11
Grade 8
Humanism
Israel
Qualitative Research
Second Language Instruction
Statistical Analysis
Israel
France
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Summary:This paper argues that all research should be based on humanistic pedagogies with educational functions. While conducting research associated with issues of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL), researchers should pay attention to whether the samples have also been well educated. This study emphasizes that when focusing on significances of doing research and collecting data, educators and researchers in an experiment project should not ignore the study's functions of real education and language learning. Based on ethic and humanistic views, teachers or researchers of a research project should maintain their educational responsibilities, instead of just collecting data for journal publishing. Researchers should focus on helping students learn appropriately in a realistic environment, not merely on reporting the experiment results. This study has compared 2 EFL experiments conducted in France's and Israel's language learning programs. The Israeli study, with both functions of doing research and educating students, has been described to be a more humanistic study. The student samples of the study learned something and the method of data collection was appropriate. In contrast, the study conducted in France showed a possible bias model of EFL experimentation, disregarding significant functions of education. This study argues that while conducting research plans, researchers should ask themselves a critical question: Have we educated our children, or, have we just paid attention to doing research, collecting data and publishing papers? (Contains 1 table.)