Abstract:
This study reports a mixed methods design investigation into language teachers’ conception of research. The study drew on various sources of data, including teachers’ responses to questionnaires items, qualitative comments in follow-up interviews, and contributions to e-mail inquiries. Results showed that the teachers’ understanding of research is mainly associated with a standard view of research. From the teachers’ perspectives, key elements of research include the existence of a priori research questions, objectives and rigorous data, a large number of participants, and the use of statistics for the analysis of results. Findings also pointed to the teachers’ consensus on the idea that educational research must address practical problems and have pedagogical implications. In addition, the teachers seemed to see research as a producer of new knowledge, an activity that will result in discovering and offering new pedagogical alternatives. The study concludes with the discussion of the underlying factors that have shaped the teachers’ views of research.
Machine summary:
The study drew on various sources of data, including teachers’ responses to questionnaires items, qualitative comments in follow-up interviews, and contributions to e-mail inquiries.
From the teachers’ perspectives, key elements of research include the existence of a priori research questions, objectives and rigorous data, a large number of participants, and the use of statistics for the analysis of results.
For instance, The 10th International Annual Meeting of Teaching English Language and Literature Society of Iran (TELLSI 10) was particularly devoted to the integration of research, practice, and policy in the Iranian ELT context.
The motivations behind these initiatives and a more particular drive to make language teaching an evidence-based profession come from the assumption that teachers’ involvement in reading and carrying out research helps them move out of their submissive positions in educational systems and encourages them to play more innovatory and important roles in curriculum development (Gurney, 1989).
4. Results This study drew on three sources of data to understand the teachers’ conceptions of research: ratings of 10 research scenarios, ratings of the characteristics of good quality research (see Table 3), and the teachers’ qualitative comments including follow-up interviews and contributions to e-mail inquiries.
Whereas research often offers a form of knowledge that is propositional, analytical, fully cognitive, unaffected by emotions or desires, and is ideally connected to a scientific understanding of a problem, language teachers need perceptual, practical, situational, and often-unconscious type of knowing that aims at helping them decide how to act in a particular situation (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Fenstermacher, 1994).