Several critical realists working in applied linguistics recently took part in a webinar organised by the Kyoto chapter of the Japanese Association for Language Teaching (JALT). In this panel Jérémie Bouchard (Hokkai Gakuen University, Sapporo), Dominic Edsall (University College London, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine) and Karin Zotzmann (University of Southampton) aimed to show comprehensively how research in Applied Linguistics can be improved by adopting a Critical Realist framework. After an overview of the main tenets of CR the panel gave concrete examples of studies where CR made it possible to transcend the conceptual and methodological constraints imposed by both empiricism and positivism (mostly associated with quantitative research) and interpretivism and social constructivism (mostly associated with qualitative research), the two dominant tendencies in the field.
Further details, including videos and PDFS of the presentations, are available on the JALT page about the webinar.