‘Great idea but just no time’:

Teachers’ 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
 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.
 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

Teacher Research in ELT

Theoretical Debate Empirical Research

 What We Don’t 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?
 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?
10 Conditions for Research Engagement

Knowledge &
Skills
Awareness Recognition

Mentoring
Motivation Community

Resources

Choice Dissemination
Potential

Expectations
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.
 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?
 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.
 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

 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.

 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

 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%
 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 34
their job.
Time for doing research is built into teachers' workloads 18
 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.
 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

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
 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”.
 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.
 And Questions
What kinds of
How ‘typical’
are these research do
findings? teachers do?

What do What are the

‘sometimes’ management’s
and ‘often’
mean? perspectives?
 ‘Great idea but just no time’:
Teachers’ views of research and its
role in their professional lives
Simon Borg
Centre for Language Education Research
School of Education
University of Leeds