Dick Allwright

Dick Allwright (b. 1938) is former Chair in Applied Linguistics at Lancaster University and the originator of Exploratory Practice, the teacher-research tradition that took classroom research out of the hands of visiting academics and put it back with the people in the room. He retired formally in 2003 but has kept writing and speaking since. His earlier publications appear under the initials R.L. Allwright.

The line through the career is a refusal to treat teaching as something that happens while research is really happening elsewhere. Focus on the Language Classroom (1991, with Kathleen Bailey) is the standard introduction to what classroom observation actually reveals about interaction, control, and learning opportunity. Exploratory Practice, developed through the 1990s and 2000s, reframes the problem: teachers and learners investigate their own "puzzles" of classroom life inside normal lessons rather than treating research as a bolt-on activity.

Career

• Chair in Applied Linguistics, Lancaster University
• Long collaboration with teacher-research networks in Brazil, Japan, and elsewhere
• Retired from Lancaster in 2003; continuing Exploratory Practice work with Judith Hanks and others

Published Work

• Focus on the Language Classroom: An Introduction to Classroom Research for Language Teachers (1991, with Kathleen Bailey)
• "Exploratory Practice: rethinking practitioner research in language teaching," Language Teaching Research (2003)
• The Developing Language Learner: An Introduction to Exploratory Practice (2009, with Judith Hanks)

Influence

• Redefined the relationship between research and teaching through Exploratory Practice
• Shaped classroom-centred research as a field with its own methods and ethics rather than an application of general methodologies
• A long-standing reference for teacher development programmes that take teacher inquiry seriously