Research Culture and Factors Affecting their Involvement in Doing Research: Myanmar University Context

บทคัดย่อ

The gap between research and practice has been an endemic feature of the
English language teaching profession (Borg. 2007). This concern has recently received
major attention by the call for empirical investigations to be conducted in order to improve
the relationship between research and practice. The purpose of the present study was
to investigate the extent to which English teachers engage in doing and reading research.
The research also aimed at exploring the motivations that can promote English teachers’
research engagement. Data were collected through conducting questionnaire surveys with
113 English teachers with various teaching backgrounds. Analysis of the data revealed
moderate level of research engagement. The results also showed a wide range of
motivations, including to obtain an outsider perspective toward the practice of teaching
and to find out what other people are doing. The analysis also demonstrates that practical
relevance of research to classroom setting and developing social network that can promote
teachers’ research engagement remain their main motivations for research engagement.
Teachers’ professional development and pedagogical concerns comprise other potential
motivations that can be profitably used to encourage teachers’ research engagement.