ABSTRACT
Increasing globalisation and the increasing mobility of populations has become truisms in discussions of education, and their impact on educational systems and practices is widely acknowledged. As Luke notes:
Such forces have changed the nature of teaching and learning and necessitate an increased engagement with linguistic and cultural diversity. In addition to processes of mobility, the use of technologies has disconnected communication and social networks from local contexts in ways that allow and even require individuals to develop affi liations and identities that cut across national, ethnic and linguistic lines (Gee, 2000a, 2000b; Lam, 2006). The consequence is that language practices are constituted transnationally. This is not simply a case of the integration of speakers of English as an additional language into wider patterns of English language communication but also involvement of people in complex multilingual contexts, such as those found in anime fan-sites (Black, 2007; Thorne & Black, 2009). This chapter aims to examine some issues which globalisation and increasing mobility have for research in English language arts and the considerations which researchers need to make in developing research designs for complex multilingual contexts. It will argue that the key issue in research design is not so much methodology as a reconceptualization of what constitutes research practice in contexts of linguistic and cultural diversity.
