“We Are Learning So Much Together!”: A Sustained Teaching-Research Collaboration

In this chapter, we share the journey of our teaching-research collaboration over a four-year period, with a focus on our most recent work. As English language educators who have collaborated in contexts comprising secondary and post-secondary institutions, we describe and reflect on the dynamics and culture of sustaining collaborative research that bridges these contexts. We have drawn from action research methodology and collected data with an eye toward improving our practice and sharing what we learned. In this chapter, we center on our collaboration to adapt and teach two online MA in TESOL courses for in-service teachers. In the context of a higher education environment that supports collaborative action research between faculty and K-12 teachers in the U.S., our findings illustrate the importance of building and sustaining university-school research partnerships as well as generating and sharing knowledge. We encourage scholars and practitioners in TESOL to engage in teaching-research collaborations with like-minded peers and share their work with the English language learning and teaching community.