Professor works with Tunisian educators via State Department language program

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Brandon Sherman, assistant research professor of applied linguistics and assistant director of Penn State’s Center for Language Acquisition, spent this summer working with educators in Tunisia through the U.S. Department of State’s English Language Specialist Program.

The grant allowed Sherman to spend three weeks training 40 English teachers and 25 supervisors on how to conduct action research as a means of improving student performance and assessment. He and another program specialist, Tammy Johnson, collaborated closely with the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia's capital city of Tunis.

Overseen by U.S. embassies in more than 80 countries, the English Language Specialist Program is described by the State Department as “the premier opportunity for leaders in the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) to enact meaningful and sustainable changes in the way that English is taught abroad.” Sherman received another program grant in 2023 that allowed him to design an online workshop series for Russian English teachers.

In Tunisia, he and Johnson focused their instruction on action research, a type of scholarship specifically meant to be implemented within the practitioner’s particular context — in this case, the classroom.

“With action research, you become a researcher by doing the research, not just by learning about research,” Sherman said. “It can be knowledge creation as in academia, but it’s really about building evidence-based narratives that can convince stakeholders in schools that this is a change that needs to happen. Our main goal was to get the educators to learn about action research and get them up to speed on the tools of research in academia, and then apply that research outside of academia and make change happen within their specific context.”

By the end of the sessions, the teachers and supervisors (referred to as “inspectors” in Tunisia) had to design a proposal for a research project they could work on and complete over the summer months, said Sherman, who met with the group over Zoom after returning from the trip.

Given the tight timeline and the fact that they were on summer break, the educators were encouraged to choose a project that didn’t directly involve students, Sherman said.

“We told them, ‘Look, you really can’t study your students right now,’” he said. “So, we nudged them to study things like class materials, their colleagues, the building staff. I have to say, the educators were very enthusiastic. They were very willing to push back, and they had great, strong personalities. It was a good experience for me, too, learning about their contexts and the intricacies of their culture.”

Sherman and Johnson worked closely with the educators on key ethics-themed research concepts like gaining consent, ensuring no harm and protecting anonymity.

It was also critical to show the educators what actual quantitative and qualitative research looks like in practice, so Sherman and Johnson created questionnaires for the group to answer and demonstrated how to analyze the resulting data. In addition, they showed them how to conduct interviews and turn them into analyzable transcripts.

The educators were encouraged to discuss issues particularly relevant to them, such as teacher burnout, student motivation, special needs students, neurodiversity and assessment.

“In action research, what you’re ultimately trying to do is identity problems and potential solutions, and then move that forward. It’s about helping them take ownership of the tools and mindsets of research so they can develop their own approach,” Sherman said. “The thing is, teachers are natural researchers — when they’re assessing students, they’re looking for evidence of growth and how much progress the student is making. They call us experts, but our job is to come in and let them know, ‘You are the ones with expertise here.’ It’s their priorities and their project, and hopefully it will be really impactful.”

Sherman left Tunisia excited about the educators’ budding research capabilities, and how his own work will continue to evolve as a result of the experience.

“I’m continuing to think about what it means to be an action researcher,” he said. “Teachers are researchers by nature but don’t see themselves that way, so how do you build an identity as an action researcher and how do you do that through practice? How can you pragmatically set people up to have a first successful project where they can learn all those lessons they ultimately need to practice? By doing that they become change agents through research.”