INTRODUCTION
Qualitative Research and Learner
Development
Masuko Miyahara, International Christian University
Patrick Kiernan, Meiji University
Chika Hayashi, Seikei UniversityT

he theme for this issue, qualitative research and learner development, emerged from ourshared questions and concerns about how such research is conducted When and why
do we decide to take a qualitative approach? For us, a mixture of dissatisfaction with thelimitations of results provided by quantitative methods on the one hand and an interest in therichness of narrative accounts of experiences of teaching and learning on the other made qualitative research seem more closely related to our practice and interests In particular, qualitative
research seemed intimately concerned with giving voice to the lived experience of teaching andlearning Masuko’s research has focused on issues of learner development and autonomy (Miyahara, 2011) giving voice both to her teaching context, where bilingual development is central
to her institution’s educational philosophy and public identity, as well as her personal development as a bilingual Her approach to this has been through narrative explorations of learning
histories which have allowed her to engage with such slippery topics as emotion and identity(Miyahara, 2015) Similarly, Chika’s interests in learner autonomy have involved her in narrative explorations of the voices of learners and teachers through such themes as reflection,
professional development (Hayashi, 2010), learner autonomy (Hayashi, 2011) and collaboration(Hayashi, 2014) As with Masuko, an interest in the learning experience, derived both fromher own development as a bilingual and from those in her classroom, have attracted her to therichness of qualitative approaches Patrick’s research is concerned with language and identity
using narrative and qualitative approaches that give voice to the participants, whether teachers(Kiernan, 2010), learners (Kiernan, 2018) or cyclists (Kiernan, 2017)
Although, as our experiences attest, qualitative research may appear to be personal explorations that occur outside the mainstream of language teaching, the emergence of qualitative research in language teaching research has its roots in the shift away from a preoccupation withteaching methods towards an interest in the learner that dates back to the 1970s This shift wasrealised in the emergence of terms and notions such as “learner-centred,” “student-centred,”“individual,” “learner autonomy,” “diversity” and “meeting individual needs” which started to dominate the language learning discourse (e g , Benson, 2007; and see Larsen-Freeman,2018) The shift that recognizes the centrality of the learner in the learning process has had agreat impact on the foundational ideas that shape research and practice in the field of learnerdevelopment as well as our own personal ideas This has resulted in what could be termed as amethodological transformation in research evident in the recent increase in the number of research projects taking a qualitative approach (Benson et al, 2009; Punch, 2009) We see this asa healthy development and a maturing of the field of language education as well as a direction
to which we hope the papers in this volume may contribute
Some of the main areas of inquiry that we proposed to potential contributors at the outsetof this project include the following:

2Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 2 • December 2018

Masuko Miyahara, Patrick Kiernan, & Chika Hayashi,

1

How do we do qualitative research into learner development?
What are the practical concerns and issues we face in formulating research questions, inthe approaches and methods that we use, in the settings that we choose to explore, and in
how we gather and analyse “data”? What do we mean by “data” and “analysis” in qualitative research?

2

How do we negotiate the project with learners and other participants?
What are the roles, relationships and identities of the researcher(s) and participants? How
do we include others in qualitative research?

3

How do we write up qualitative research about learner development?
In what ways do different genres of writing enable or constrain us in writing about qualitative research into learner development?

4 What makes research into learner development “qualitative”?
What are the philosophical underpinnings of qualitative research? What are the philosophical ideas about knowledge and truth that we can draw on for our research?
5

What ethical issues arise and who “owns” the research?
What happens when ethical purity meets messy reality?

Using these five main questions as pillars for further inquiry, the aim of this issue was notto provide answers, but to delineate and identify the issues pertaining to conducting qualitative research surrounding learner development. With particular reference to the fifth question listed above, one of the overriding issues that we observed throughout the papers is thesubject of reflexivity. This topic is addressed explicitly in some of the papers in this issue,
while it is embedded in a more implicit manner in others. A researcher’s reflexivity, in thebroadest sense, is “the ability to be able to self-consciously refer to him or herself in relation
to the production of knowledge about the research topics” (Roulston, 2010, p 116) However,this grand definition leads us to ponder questions about the moral and social value and educational relevance of the knowledge that is generated (Ortega, 2005, 2012) As Ushioda (2018)
recently stated in her plenary speech at a Psychology of Language Learning conference held at
Waseda University, the following questions need to be addressed: Who is the research for? Whoowns the research? How and why do we conduct research? What is the societal and educational valueof the research? Although such questions are pertinent to all research, these should also be thevery questions that we should critically examine when we pursue our research in the field oflearner development (and for that matter, qualitative research in general) In turn, the answers to these questions determine whose voices emerge in the published research as well as
whether this is a single voice or a Researching the Relationship of Learner Emotion to Language Learning: Issues and Challenges (see Gallagher, this issue; Bakhtin, 1973, 1981)
The ordering of the papers is intended to reflect a move from practical issues and “casestudies” towards more methodological, theoretical and abstract concerns. In the first paper,“Researching the Relationship of Learner Emotion to Language Learning: Issues and Challenges,” Nicole Gallagher focuses on the affective aspects of language learning with a particular focus on learner emotion and explores first-year Japanese undergraduates’ emotions ina discussion class she taught over the period of one semester The written form of narrativeinquiry Gallagher employed for this research study helped the students to reflect on theirexperiences of conducting extended discussions in English on a regular basis, which resulted
in identifying both positive and negative emotions that the students experienced during theclass Sharing the challenges and issues she faced throughout the research study, Gallagher
sheds light on the use of written narrative inquiry to better understand learner emotions

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 2 • December 20183

Qualitative Research and Learner Development

Similarly seeking to explore learner experience through writing, Daniel Hooper’s paper“Peering behind the curtain: A Diary Study of Self-directed Learning and Motivation in eikaiwa” is a diary study conducted at an English conversation (eikaiwa) school in Japan. It is acase study with one Japanese student (Haruka) which draws on L2 diary entries in an attempt
to identify motivational factors that contribute to her self-directed language learning in thespecific educational setting of eikaiwa Hooper analyses detailed descriptions of Haruka’s L2
voice narrated through the written diary entries over 6 months and explores Haruka’s key
motivational factors together with the specific meaning of going to eikaiwa school to her
Hooper also relates L2 diary studies to pedagogical issues and argues for the potential use ofL2 diary studies in teaching and future studies
The third article, “Exploring the Dual Role of Advisors in English Learning Advisory Sessions,” Ryo Moriya reports on face-to-face advisory sessions conducted with two Japanese secondary school students in a cram school As a part-time cram school teacher, Moriya engaged
in advisory sessions in English on a regular basis over one year The data gained through oneon-one sessions with the two students are analysed to identify types of teaching and specificincidents observed during the sessions Moriya examines the possibilities of conducting advisory sessions in English in contrast to the participants’ native language (Japanese) and emphasises the necessity of introducing advisory sessions at the secondary school levels
Christine O’Leary’s “Exploring the Development of Learner Autonomy from a Postmodern
and Social Constructivist Perspective: Prioritising Voices” discusses the benefits and methodological challenges of researching the development of learner autonomy Excerpting the datafrom a case study that she carried out in a UK higher education institution, O’Leary examinesthe benefits of using a postmodernist approach, demonstrates how it can be applied in practice,and provides new insight into qualitative research on the development of learner autonomy
In the fifth paper, “Qualitative Research Methods in Second Language Learning: Review andEvaluation,” Clare F. Kaneko explicates qualitative research methods together with her reflection of her first-time experience of conducting a qualitative research study. As a student-researcher, Kaneko engaged in an action research project concerning her Japanese university
students’ use of smart phones in English classes While describing her own experiences, sheshares various aspects of her decision-making processes regarding the research methods,
tools, and selection of participants in a chronological order and the struggles and issues she
faced throughout the whole research project are discussed in a reflective manner, which will
be a significant cornerstone for her future studies.
Our final paper, before the conclusion provided by Gary Barkhuizen, is Fergal Bradley and
Leena Karlsson’s “Storytelling for Learning and Healing: Parallel Narrative Inquiries in Language Counselling ” Both Bradley and Karlsson engage in collaborative writing and demonstrate the narrative nature of counselling and learning, Bradley, linking to the idea of healing,and Karlsson providing an example of how the narrative approach to counselling helped one
student with overcoming language anxiety They describe their language counselling with anemphasis on its parallel nature, which not only helps the learner to overcome difficulties but
also leads them to professional development The dialogic narrative they chose for this paper
itself implies the importance of storytelling as well as the powerful role that narrative counselling plays in the field of language counselling and language learning.
Taken together, then, the papers in this volume each offer their own answers to the questions we shared in formulating the theme of qualitative research into learner development
Nevertheless, it seems clear that all of these researchers place a prominent emphasis on thevoices of their research participants. Thus, the studies find various ways to capture participant voices, often in narrative form Gallagher and Hooper both use written assignments asa way to both explore their learner’s experiences and build rapport with them, while Moriya

4

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 2 • December 2018

Masuko Miyahara, Patrick Kiernan, & Chika Hayashi,

uses recordings Kaneko’s discussion of the problems she encountered using a “think aloudprotocol” underline the fact that capturing voices itself is far from straight forward
Notably, the focus on participants’ voices is a very different position from quantitative
research where participants’ contributions are framed within responses predetermined by
the researcher and subsumed as numerical data This “prioritizing of voices”, explicit in thetitle of O’Leary’s paper, also extends to the ways in which the researchers and writers openup their own voices of experience Bradley and Karlsson overtly share their respective experiences of their counselling and learning context Kaneko, Hooper and Moriya and to a lesser
extent Gallagher and O’Leary also share the experiences and even insecurities associated withtackling a research project that are all too easily glossed over The negotiation of voices wasalso something we faced as editors discussing the content and style of papers not only withthe authors and reviewers but also with members of the journal’s steering group who provided detailed feedback and guidance on the final shape of the papers.
One of the aspirations of qualitative research is that enough of the researchers and participants’ voices make it into the published article for readers to evaluate the projects in the lightof their own experience We have certainly enjoyed seeing these papers develop and the voicesof the authors and their learners emerge and hope that they prove a valuable contribution to
the literature on qualitative research in learner development

References
Bakhtin, M M (1973) Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics (R W Rotsel, Trans ) Michigan, MI:
Ann Arbor
Bakhtin, M M (1981) The dialogic imagination: Four essays (C Emmerson, Trans ) Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press
Benson, P (2007) Autonomy in language teaching and learning Language Teaching, 40(1), 21-40
Benson, P., Chik, A., Gao, X., Huang, J., & Wang, W. (2009). Qualitative research in language
teaching and learning journals, 1997-2006 Modern Language Journal 93(1):79-90
Hayashi, C (2010). A teacher’s perceptions of students’ transformational creativity in a secondary
language classroom in Japan: A case study of professional development. (Unpublished doctoraldissertation) University of Nottingham
Hayashi, C (2011) Transformative learning in action: Insights from the practice of journal
writing. In K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Realizing autonomy: Practice and reflection in language
education contexts (pp 94-106) Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Hayashi, C (2014) Exploring collaborative dialogue in group journal writing In T Ashwell,M. Miyahara, S. Paydon & A. Stewart (Eds.), Collaborative learning in learner development(CLiLD). Tokyo: JALT LD SIG.
Kiernan, P (2010) Narrative identity in English language teaching: Exploring interviews in Japaneseand English. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Kiernan, P (2017) Language identity and cycling in the new media age: Exploring interpersonalsemiotics in multimodal media and online texts. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Kiernan, P (2018) Learner narratives of translingual identities: A multimodal approach to exploring
language learning histories. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Larsen-Freeman, D (2018) Looking ahead: Future directions in, and future research into,
second language acquisition Foreign Language Annals, 51, 55-72
Miyahara, M (2011) Creating space for learning: Language learning materials and autonomy
In K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Realizing autonomy: Practice and reflection in language education
contexts (pp 65-77) Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 2 • December 20185

Qualitative Research and Learner Development

Miyahara, M (2015) Emerging self-identities and emotion in foreign language teaching: A
narrative-oriented approach. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters
Ortega, L (2005) For what and for whom is our research? The ethical as transformative lensin instructed SLA Modern Language Journal, 89, 427-443
Ortega, L (2012) Epistemological diversity and moral ends of research in instructed SLALanguage Teaching Research, 16, 206-226
Punch, K F (2009) Introduction to research methods in education London: Sage
Roulston, K (2010) Reflective interviewing: A guide to theory and practice London: Sage
Ushioda, E (2018) Whose interests does language learning motivation research serve? Stretching theboundaries Paper presented at the Psychology of Language Learning Conference, Waseda
University, Tokyo

Editor Bios
Masuko Miyahara is Senior Lecturer, English for Liberal Arts, International Christian University She holds a MA in TESOL and a PhD in second language learning from the Institute ofEducation, University of London Her research interest focuses on learner/teacher identities,emotions, and autonomy in language education She is also interested in research methodology and methods in language learning research, particularly in the area of narratives Oneof her current ongoing research projects involves research concerning English as Medium ofInstructions (EMI) context at Japanese higher education.
Patrick Kiernan is Associate Professor at Meiji University in the School of Business Administration He holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham He hastaught English in Japan since 1990 in a variety of contexts and to students of all ages. His
main research interest is in exploring the relationship between language and identity throughqualitative methodologies including narrative, functional and multimodal approaches in language learning contexts but also in the world at large
Chika Hayashi is Associate Professor at Seikei University in Tokyo She holds a PhD from theSchool of Education, University of Nottingham Her research interests include motivation,
learner/teacher autonomy, teacher education, cultural influences on classroom language
learning, and psychological aspect of second language learning in classroom She is particularly interested in exploring learners’ affective components through visual narratives as wellas methods of scaffolding learner autonomy.

Acknowledgements
We would first like to thank the writers for their contributions and perseverance in developing their papers and also extend an especially big thank you to the members of the Learner
Development Journal Review Network Andy Barfield, Paul Collet, Ann Mayeda, Fumiko Murase, Jo Mynard, Diane Nagatomo, Ted O’Neill, Jim Ronald, Colin Rundle, Akiko Takagi, andKatherine Thornton Additional thanks are due the members of The Learner Development
Journal Steering Group—Tim Ashwell, Darren Elliot, and Alison Stewart—for their encouragement and support in helping us arrive at the end of a very long journey indeed. And, finally, a big thanks to Malcolm Swanson for the invaluable skills he brought to the layout anddesign stages of publishing this second issue of the journal

6Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 2 • December 2018