Professor Alireza Sobhanmanesh Presents at AAAL Conference

Professor Alireza Sobhanmanesh’s research program explores psychological constructs such as motivation, classroom engagement, flow, resilience, personality, and emotions in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) contexts. He also uses participatory and community-based approaches to examine EAP learners’ experiences and support their well-being. Over the past couple of years, he has shared this work at national and international conferences and has submitted a few manuscripts to journals in the psychology of language learning. He also has a forthcoming book chapter based on his ongoing research. 

Alireza’s most recent article, published in Language Teaching Research, examines the motivation and classroom engagement of EAP learners during a participatory action research intervention. In this study, 18 learners and their teacher formed a classroom community in which power was shared and collaborative changes were made to lesson design and delivery. Learners also collaborated in the design and implementation of social activities where they interacted with other members of the public and carried out mini-research projects.

This study used a complex, longitudinal mixed-methods design that combined in-class experience sampling with qualitative reflections and interviews. The findings showed significant increases in classroom engagement before and after the intervention, as well as from baseline to end-of-class measures. Motivation also increased over broader timescales (half-semester and end-of-semester). Finally, motivation and engagement were found to be complementary constructs, revealing important information about learners’ desire to participate in activities as well as their actual participation in those activities.

Alireza looks forward to continuing his work on learners’ motivational regulation and the sustainment of their engagement over time in his upcoming research projects.