I usually use this blog to share content and information that I think you might find interesting. But this post is somewhat different: it’s a request for some help from those of you who have about 10 minutes to spare.
A study of research engagement
My colleague, Chrysa Ntai, and I are involved in a study of research engagement among language teachers. Research engagement, in the sense that we understand it, involves two things: In one sense it involves reading articles and books about language or teaching. In a different sense, it is about actually doing research in our own classes, even if it’s something as simple as comparing two textbooks or two different teaching methods in a structured way.
What we have found out, anecdotally and from reading the literature, is that many of us engage in research during our studies, but research engagement in our actual practice is not quite as common. In the literature, there are many plausible explanations: maybe we don’t have that much time, or maybe research is not that important after all, or perhaps as we become more experienced it seems less important – or it could be any combination of the above.
Our goal is to find out if there are ways to make research engagement more meaningful for ELT. But to do this, we need to find out more about what teachers around the world actually think, and about what is possible in our diverse professional contexts.
How you might help
In our study, we will take a two-step approach to understanding why and how teachers engage with research. First, we want to reach out to as many teachers as possible and document your beliefs and practices. Next, we hope that we might be able to ask some of you to share your views in online interviews, which will take place late in Spring.
So, here’s what we ask: If you are a teacher or student teacher, do you think that you might be able to share your views in the survey below? From our piloting, we estimate that this will take about 10 minutes of your time.
The powers-that-be at our university insist that we tell you we cannot remunerate you for your time, although we will be able to give a book coupon (Amazon) to those among you who are selected for interviews.
All the usual precautions and safeguards associated with this type of research are in place: ethics approvals, confidentiality in processing your data, total anonymity in reporting, safe and encrypted storage of your data… If you would like to find out more, do take a look at this page, or feel free to reach out to me.
Before you go…
Even if you do not have time to do the survey, or if this is not your thing, you can help us a lot by forwarding the survey to anyone who might be able to answer.
Thank you once again for reading this post and for any help that you can give us!
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