Research Engagement and Professional Development: English Language Teachers’ Perspectives

Abstract

Research is the lifeblood of education development and in the Myanmar tertiary education sector, it is more urgent than ever for teachers to engage in extensive research activities. An understanding of ELT teachers’ views on research is an initial step in the effort to promote their research engagement. With an aim to investigate Myanmar ELT teachers’ perspectives on research, a questionnaire survey was conducted with the format developed on an international baseline proposed by Borg (2009). The questionnaire comprising 10 scenarioswas administered to 146 ELT teachers serving at universities in Upper Myanmar. Each situation in the questionnaire was to be identified as belonging to a research scenario or not on a Likert-like scale of definitely research, probably research, definitely not research and probably not research. Participant teachers were also asked to respond how often they were research-engaged and state the reasons for their research engagement or non-engagement. The result revealed that most ELT teachers considered a large-scale survey and statistical data as research. Not having sufficient time and unfamiliarity with research principles and methods were common issues for their lack of engagement in research. Appropriate measures should be taken to address these issues with a view to promoting ELT teachers’ research engagement for their professional development and overall development of ELT in Myanmar.