Who is afraid of Action Research: the risky practice of immanent critique

In this piece,I explore the current status of Action Research in the EAP community and suggest some reasons why it is perhaps under utilised as a potentially emancipatory way for EAP practitioners to become researchers of their own practices and conditions. I frame these reasons as ‘risks’ that teachers investigating their own practices can pose. In order to
do this, this article provides an example of my own practitioner research conducted within an Action Research framework on the assessment of writing on an EAP pre-sessional course at one UK institution. I do this not to provide an example of good research but to
reinforce my central thesis that conducting research is a difficult, risky but ultimately necessary practice for the EAP practitioner.