Questioning Standards of Evaluation in Educational Research: Do Educational Researchers Ventriloquize Learners’ Voices in L2 Education?

Authors

Anastasia A. Boldireff, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, CanadaFollow

Abstract

Learners are not stakeholders in their own education. Adhering to the quantitative gold standard in English as a Second Language (ESL) deprives the learner from having a voice in their learning process. This paper addresses voicelessness and ventriloquism in ESL, ventriloquism referring to the act of voicing the thoughts of another person, in this case the system overriding the learners’ experiences. This article addresses this problem, aligning itself with the Platinum standard while challenging the quantitative gold standard in ESL research. This paper offers resonance and semantic reliability as evaluative measures in educational research taken from literary criticism. The notion of resonance has been addressed in the literature on qualitative research since the dawn of the narrative turn; I address how resonance can be used in educational research.

Keywords

qualitative research, validity, narrative inquiry, applied linguistics, ESL/EFL

Author Bio(s)

Anastasia Boldireff is currently doing her PhD at Concordia University. Ms. Boldireff has been a language teacher for the last nine years. She has presented at multiple conferences in the last five years, where she has been both a panel and plenary speaker on topics ranging from Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Literacy, Writing, Classroom Management, the Communicative Approach, Public Speaking, and Second Language Pronunciation. She received her Honours Bachelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing from York University, Toronto and then went on to obtain her Master of Arts in Literature from the University of Toronto. In addition, she holds her TESL Diploma in ESL teaching and a diploma in Latin-English Translation from the Toronto School of Theology. She has taught in Northern Ireland, Colombia and Canada. She is an academic, athlete, activist, and poet. Please direct correspondence to anastasia.boldireff@mail.concordia.ca.

Publication Date

6-3-2021

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2021.4691

Recommended APA Citation

Boldireff, A. A. (2021). Questioning Standards of Evaluation in Educational Research: Do Educational Researchers Ventriloquize Learners’ Voices in L2 Education?. The Qualitative Report, 26(6), 1724-1735. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2021.4691