Plonsky, Luke; Isaacs, Talia; Taylor, Lynda; (2025) Opportunities and Challenges for Research Synthesis in Applied Linguistics: Three Scholars Reflect. Research Synthesis in Applied Linguistics 10.1080/29984475.2025.2518085. (In press).

Text Isaacs_AAM Plonsky et al. 2025.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 21 June 2026. Download (416kB)

Abstract

As part of the journal’s official launch, the Editors of Research Synthesis in Applied Linguistics, Sin-Wang Chong and Sathena Chan, invited the three of us to reflect on this moment and on the focus of the journal. This paper presents a written form of those reflections. Our comments address a range of challenges, opportunities, and perspectives regarding the role and value of research synthesis. Each of us also highlights several tensions that we feel merit careful consideration among synthesists, synthetic methodologists, and other stakeholders throughout applied linguistics. Looking across our three reflections, a number of themes also arise such as the ethical imperative to make our research accessible beyond academic audiences and the need for transparency, both generally and in the case of researcher positionality.

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