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Great idea but just no timeTeachers views of
research and its role in their professional lives

• Simon Borg
• Centre for Language Education Research
• School of Education
• University of Leeds
• Workshop given at IH Barcelona, Spain, 29 March
  2006

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Insights from Education

• In UK, large investment in research on teachers
  involvement in research.
• Studies of teachers views of research suggest
  these equate with scientific models.
• Teachers acknowledge the value of doing research.
• Teachers do not feel that their working
  conditions support their involvement in research.

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Insights from Education

• More recent work has focused on research-engaged
  schools rather than individual teachers.
• Institutional conditions which support teacher
  research have been proposed
• organisational commitment
• research-oriented culture
• desire to improve quality of teaching learning
• collaborative working patterns

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Teacher Research in ELT
Theoretical Debate
Empirical Research
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What We Dont Know

• How much teacher research takes place? Where?
  What are the characteristics of the teachers who
  do it? What motivates them? What conditions
  support or hinder their efforts?

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Discuss

1. Have you ever been advised or advised teachers
   that doing research is good or desirable?
2. To what extent has this advice been taken up in
   practice?
3. What conditions do you feel facilitate or hinder
   teachers efforts to do research?

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10 Conditions for Research Engagement
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Investigating Research Engagement in ELT

• Why?
• To understand teachers views about research and
  its role in their professional lives.

Yes, but WHY? To obtain evidence which can inform
attempts to increase teacher engagement in
research.
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Four Questions

• What conceptions of research do EFL teachers
  hold?
• How do they rate the research culture of their
  institution?
• To what extent do teachers say they do research?
• What reasons do they give for doing or not doing
  research?

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The Questionnaire

• Please spend 10 minutes completing the
  questionnaire. If you would prefer not to or have
  already done so, feel free to stretch your legs
  for a few minutes.

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Conceptions of Research
A university lecturer gave a questionnaire about
the use of computers in language teaching to 500
teachers. Statistics were used to analyse the
questionnaires. The lecturer wrote an article
about the work in an academic journal.

• 98 of the teachers said this was research

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Conceptions of Research
Mid-way through a course, a teacher gave a class
of 30 students a feedback form. The next day,
five students handed in their completed forms.
The teacher read these and used the information
to decide what to do in the second part of the
course.

• 73.5 of the teachers said this was not research.

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Conceptions of Research
A teacher noticed that an activity she used in
class did not work well. She thought about this
after the lesson and made some notes in her
diary. She tried something different in her next
lesson. This time the activity was more
successful.

• 68 of the teachers said this was not research

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Conceptions of Research

• Teachers also asked to identify characteristics
  of good research

The researcher is objective 97.9
Hypotheses are tested 87.5
Variables are controlled 79.2
A large number of people are studied 73.5
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Research Culture
Agree ()
Teachers have access to research books and journals 86
Teachers do research themselves 60
The management encourages teachers to do research 52
Teachers talk about research 38
Teachers feel that doing research is an important part of their job. 34
Time for doing research is built into teachers' workloads 18
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Doing Research
Often 22.4
Sometimes 38.8
Rarely 36.7
Never 2.1
Teachers reporting more favourable perceptions of
the institutional research culture said they did
research more often.
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Reasons for Doing Research
because it is good for my professional development
to find better ways of teaching
to solve problems in my teaching
because I enjoy it

because my employer expects me to
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Reasons for Not Doing Research
I do not have time to do research

my job is to teach not to do research
I am not interested in doing research
most of my colleagues do not do research

My employer discourages it
I do not know enough about research methods
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Time

• As a teacher-researcher I've found it extremely
  difficult to carry out research projects and
  publish. I just don't have the time. I teach
  32.5 hours / week and need to prepare for those
  classes in addition to work with the teachers'
  union and our technology committee. It's a
  shame.

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Some Conclusions

• Teachers held a standard view of scientific
  research.
• 61 said they did research at least sometimes.
• 34 agreed that teachers feel that doing research
  is an important part of their work.
• 80 disagreed that time for research is built
  into their workload.
• There was a significant relationship between
  views of the institutional research culture and
  reported levels of doing research.

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And Questions
What kinds of research do teachers do?

• How typical are these findings?

What are the managements perspectives?

• What do sometimes and often mean?

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Great idea but just no timeTeachers views of
research and its role in their professional lives

• Simon Borg
• Centre for Language Education Research
• School of Education
• University of Leeds