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INTRODUCING THE SSLA METHODS FORUM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2020

Susan Gass  and
Luke Plonsky
Susan Gass*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Luke Plonsky*
Affiliation:
Northern Arizona University
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to Susan Gass, 7492 Dublin Road, Delaware, OH 43015. E-mail:gass@msu.edu.
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Type
Editorial
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , September 2020 , pp. 667 - 669
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

SLA has always been and remains a dynamic discipline that employs an increasingly wide range of methodological techniques. Over the years there has been a steady interest in research methodology/design (cf. Dörnyei, Reference Dörnyei2007; Hatch & Farhady, Reference Hatch and Farhady1982; Hatch & Lazaraton, Reference Hatch and Lazaraton1991; Mackey & Gass, Reference Mackey and Gass2012, Reference Mackey and Gass2016; Mackey & Marsden, Reference Mackey and Marsden2016; McKinley & Rose, Reference McKinley and Rose2020; Phakiti et al., Reference Phakiti, Costa, Plonsky and Starfield2018). Not only have there been numerous textbooks dealing with design and methodology, entire series have been devoted to the topic of research methods (Second Language Acquisition Research, begun in 1997 and currently published by Routledge, and Guides to Research Methods in Language and Linguistics, begun in 2011 and published by Wiley-Blackwell (https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Guides+to+Research+Methods+in+Language+and+Linguistics-c-2899). More recently, however, large numbers of scholars in the field began to take on research methodology as an explicit and even empirical focus of their work (see overview by Gass et al., Reference Gass, Loewen and Plonsky2020).

Signs of this “methodological turn” (Byrnes, Reference Byrnes2013, p. 825) can be seen in the number and variety of texts devoted to specific methods (e.g., Bowles, Reference Bowles2010; Conklin et al., Reference Conklin, Pellicer-Sanchez and Carrol2018; Dörnyei & Taguchi, Reference Dörnyei and Taguchi2009; Gass & Mackey, Reference Gass and Mackey2017; Godfroid, Reference Godfroid2020; Jegerski & VanPatten, Reference Jegerski and VanPatten2014; Jiang, Reference Jiang2012; McDonough & Trofimovich, Reference McDonough and Trofimovich2009; Spinner & Gass, Reference Spinner and Gass2019), texts devoted to data elicitation (Gass & Mackey, Reference Gass and Mackey2007; Rose et al., Reference Rose, McKinley and Baffoe-Djan2020), and texts devoted to statistics (Larson-Hall, Reference Larson-Hall2016; Plonsky, Reference Plonsky2015). We have also seen in recent years an increase in the frequency and popularity of methods workshops, initiatives promoting open science and replication (e.g., Marsden & Plonsky, Reference Marsden, Plonsky, Gudmestad and Edmonds2018; Porte & McManus, Reference Porte and McManus2019), methodological syntheses (e.g., Lindstromberg, Reference Lindstromberg2016; Marsden et al., Reference Marsden, Plonsky, Gudmestad and Edmonds2018; Plonsky & Gass, Reference Plonsky and Gass2011), and studies exploring statistical literacy among L2 researchers (e.g., Loewen et al., Reference Loewen, Lavolette, Spino, Papi, Schmidtke, Sterling and Wolff2014, Reference Loewen, Gönülal, Isbell, Ballard, Crowther, Lim, Maloney and Tigchelaar2020). Analytically speaking, a number of new statistical techniques have been introduced such as mixed-effects modeling and Bayesian data analysis (e.g., Norouzian et al., Reference Norouzian, De Miranda and Plonsky2018) as well as systematic reexaminations of familiar statistical techniques such as null hypothesis significance testing (e.g., Norris, Reference Norris2015) and multiple regression (Plonsky & Oswald, Reference Plonsky and Oswald2017). We view the scrutiny of and attention to methods embodied by these works as signs of the field’s health and maturity.

SSLA and other journals have both welcomed and played an important part of this movement (cf. Crossley et al., Reference Crossley, Marsden, Ellis, Kormos, Morgan-Short and Thierry2020). This journal, for example, has enacted updated and increasingly more rigorous publication guidelines and has sought to uphold those guidelines through its peer and editorial review process. We have also published articles that not only shed light on L2 development but also those that seek to advance methodological understanding, training, and practices in the field (e.g., Hamrick & Sachs, Reference Hamrick and Sachs2018; Keating & Jegerski, Reference Keating and Jegerski2015; Norouzian, Reference Norouzian2020; Plonsky, Reference Plonsky2013).

SSLA is now taking another step to further the field’s methodological literacy by inviting authors to submit manuscripts to the Methods Forum. Articles of this type can take a number of different forms as long as the focus is on research methods as applied to SLA. Manuscripts submitted to the Methods Forum can be conceptual, presenting an argument in favor of or against a particular technique or practice. Submissions might also present empirical data whether (a) collected specifically for the methods piece, (b) simulated, or (c) based on a reanalysis of one or more existing datasets. Articles in the Methods Forum can also introduce and make a case for a novel technique or a novel combination of techniques. However, all articles in the Methods Forum will provide implications for research design, instrumentation, analysis, reporting/dissemination, interpretation, and/or methodological training in L2 research. Papers discussing methodological issues from all research paradigms, epistemologies, ontologies, and theoretical frameworks relevant to the field are welcome.

On a practical note, we encourage authors to submit to the Methods Forum with a length of up to 11,000 words.

We hope that this new venue will contribute to the ongoing methodological progress of the field and thereby also increase our individual and collective capacity to advance our understanding of L2 development. We look forward to your submissions.

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