A Survey of EFL Teachers’ Research Engagement

The field of language teaching has recently witnessed a resurgent wave of interest in the value of educational research and its impact on teachers’ practice. Consequently, various strands of inquiry have commenced to investigate the relationship between research and practice. Within these discussions, however, the opinions of teachers are mostly ignored or reflected only circumstantially. The purpose of this study was to take teachers’ views about research on board by exploring the extent to which they use and conduct research as well as the barriers that may hinder their research engagement. To collect data, a survey questionnaire was designed and validated through soliciting experts’ opinions and conducting factor analysis. The questionnaire was then administered among a large sample of Iranian English teachers. Participants’ responses showed moderate levels of research engagement among English teachers. Results also indicated that four categories of barriers can best account for teachers’ lack of research engagement: problems related to the nature and quality of research, restrictive educational policies, lack of systematic partnership, and problems associated with the use of research in educational settings. The findings suggest that the research-practice division is the result of a complex interaction of an array of factors that cannot be simply reduced to technical matters. Thus, reconfiguration of the gap requires multidimensional strands of development in research and practice communities as well as in educational policies.