AL and Research

Founded in 1974, IAL is the oldest Accelerated Learning organization in North America. The founders organized themselves and created an organization called the Society for Accelerated Learning and Teaching (SALT) to promote Lozanov’s philosophy of teaching and learning. Soon after its inception, SALT began publishing a peer-reviewed research journal, currently known as the Journal for Accelerated Learning and Teaching (JALT).

Since 1976, JALT has published articles including critical reviews, theoretical analyses, speculative papers, case studies, quasi-experimental studies and reports of basic or applied research of major significance. Its basic focus has been Suggestopedic/Accelerated Learning theory, research and application. Copies of many of the journal articles are being made available on the IAL website. The JALT journal is now published electronically and current issues can be accessed through the IAL website.

The IAL website also lists the titles of all of the articles published in JALT from 1976 to 1995. The UCLA library has copies of all of the JALT journals and makes them available upon request. In addition to the SALT journal, quite a number of AL practitioners have completed doctoral dissertations on Accelerated Learning. To access these, readers are encouraged to check Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI).

A review of the JALT literature includes studies that report the results of the practical application of Suggestopedic/AL principles in various courses of study in educational and corporate settings and an examination of the theoretical components of Accelerated Learning. These theoretical components are subsumed under the 10 elements of Accelerated Learning espoused by the International Alliance for Learning (IAL). These ten elements are: emotional state, suggestion, the learning environment, the role of music and the arts, personal motivation, knowledge about the human brain, multiple intelligences and learning styles, imagination/metaphors, team learning and cooperation, improvement and results.

For a thorough review of the studies that have examined the relationship of each of these elements to AL philosophy and teaching, please reference Historical Review of Accelerated Learning Research: Theoretical Implications and Practical Applications available through the IAL Bookstore.

The following studies are representative of the kinds of results practitioners of AL have achieved when applying the AL methodology to a course of study. The particular studies described here were chosen, not only for the results they achieved, but also because of the thorough documentation of the methodological approach they used to gain their results. These studies look at the application of AL in foreign language instruction, K-12 environment and beyond and the corporate environment.