Teachers’ views on educational research

Author(s):

Kadir BeyciogluNiyazi OZER

Conference:

ECER 2008

Network:

16. ICT in Education and Training

Format:

Poster

Session Information

MC_Poster, Poster Session; Main Conference

All Poster are presented in the two Poster Sessions of ECER 2008: - 11 September 12.15 - 13.15 and - 12 September 12.15 - 13.15

Time:

2008-09-11

12:15-13:15

Room:

Poster Exhibition Area

Chair:

Contribution

There have been issues about the role of research in education. One of these arguments is the gap between theory and practice in educational research. Some researchers, on one hand, argue that educational research has no or little impact on practice. On the other hand, others claim that the knowledge base in educational research always lead the implementations in schools (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2005; Florio, 1981; Goldstein, 2002). According to Gall, Gall & Borg (2007), for example, “the knowledge base keeps growing, but this doesn’t mean necessarily that educational practitioners know about it, value it, or apply it in their work.” (p. 10). Recently, exploring teachers’ attitudes toward educational research has been an important subject for researchers (Everton, Galton, & Pell, 2000, 2002; Marcos & Tillema, 2006). Most of these researches aim to investigate whether teachers, as practitioners, have the time to study research and think about its practical implications. With these debates in mind, this study aims to determine teachers’ views on educational research.

Method

An instrument which was developed by Everton, Galton, & Pell (2002) was used in this study. The instrument was designed to investigate teachers’ views on research and the value they attribute to educational research. In the first part of the instrument, there are some demographic questions and questions about the impact of educational research. In the second part, there are five point scale 18 items about the value of educational research for teachers. These items are divided into two sub-scales. The first scale, which had a reliability coefficient of 0.76, concerns the value of educational research for classroom practice and the second scale, with a reliability coefficient of 0.92, concerns teachers’ own involvement in research. The population of this study was 1529 high school teachers who were working in Malatya, Turkey. The sample, which is adequate to the determining the size of a random sample provided by Krejcie & Morgan (1970), was 320 teachers who were randomly selected. All the questionnaires were administered to the teachers during 12-15 September, 2007 while they were in an in-service education at Inonu University, Malatya, Turkey.

Expected Outcomes

The data which has not been analyzed will show the relationships between the participating teachers’ demographic characteristics and their views on impact on educational research. In addition, the data will be used to see if there are any significant differences among teachers' opinions on value of educational research for classroom practice and also their involvement in research in terms of their demographic characteristics. The study will have been finished by the end of June, 2007.

References

Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2005). Research methods in educational. (5th Ed.). London: RoutledgeFalmer. Florio, D. (1981). What has research done for education lately? Who knows what it has done? Educational Researcher, 10, 28–29. Gall, M. D., Gall, J. P. & Borg, W. R. (2007). Educational research: An introduction. (8th Ed.). Berkshire: Allyn and Bacon. Goldstein, S. L. (2002). Moving beyond collaboration: Re-describing research relationships with classroom teachers. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 8, 155-170. Everton, T., Galton, M. & Pell, T. (2000). Teachers’ perspectives on educational research: Knowledge and context. Journal of Education for Teaching, 26, 167-182. Everton, T., Galton, M. & Pell, T. (2002). Educational research and the teacher. Research Papers in Education, 17, 373–401. Joram, E. (2007). Clashing epistemologies: Aspiring teachers’, practicing teachers’, and professors’ beliefs about knowledge and research in education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23, 123–135. Krejcie, R. V. & Morgan, D. W. (1970). Determining sample size for research activities. Educational and Psychological Measerument, 30, 607-310. Marcos, J. J. & Tillema, M. (2006). Studying studies of teacher reflection and action: An appraisal of research contributions. Educational Research Review, 1, 112–132.

Author Information

Kadir Beycioglu

Inonu University

Education

Malatya

212

Niyazi OZER

Inonu University

Educational Sciences

MALATYA

212

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