Data, open science, and methodological reform in second language acquisition research.
Emma J. Marsden, Luke Plonsky · White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) · 2018
The chapters in this volume attest to the fact that second language acquisition (SLA) is, undeniably, a field of diverse interests.Since the field's inception in the latter half of the 20 th century (Gass, 2009), the substantive landscape of SLA has been in a state of continuous expansion.For the most part, this growth has been constructive, and our understanding of second-language (L2) development has advanced in large part due to massive efforts in the theoretical and empirical realms.Just as critical to the advancement of this or any scientific discipline, however, is methodological rigor and transparency.Put another way, knowledge about L2 development cannot increase in the absence of high-quality research.Historically, though, there has been very little evidence of concern over research methods in the published SLA literature.The need for researcher training and methodological standards have largely been assumed to be addressed and met through institutional mechanisms, such as graduate training/supervision/assessment, and peer review (see Gonulal, Loewen, & Plonsky, 2014).This is all changing in unprecedented ways.In recent years, applied linguists have come to explicitly take methodological issues more seriously.We interpret the move toward greater methodological awareness, the "methodological turn" (Byrnes, 2013, p. 825), as critical to our understanding of L2 acquisition and a sign of the field's maturity.In this wider context, illustrated in broad strokes in this chapter, it is not by