ABSTRACT

Strong evidence has emerged that teacher educators (TEs) should be directly and actively engaged in the research process. Despite this, relatively low levels of research activity have been observed. In 2014, the British Educational Research Association (BERA) called for a national strategy to embed research-informed practice into teacher education. Previous research has revealed that TEs encounter several barriers to engaging in research. This study aimed to provide a current and detailed account of perceptions of control and ability to engage in research in a sample of TEs based at a new university in England, using the framework of the theory of planned behaviour. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 TEs to elicit control beliefs underlying research engagement. Beliefs mentioned by at least 25% of the sample were defined as accessible beliefs and were retained for further qualitative analysis. Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed seven higher-order control factors that influenced the motivation to engage in research. Specifically, these comprised a lack of time, insufficient mentoring, limited opportunities for collaboration, the nature of initial teacher education, changes in the faculty, various feelings (mostly negative) and inflexible research procedures. These accessible beliefs can be targeted by faculties of education to increase research engagement. In future research we will collect quantitative data about these beliefs from a larger sample of TEs. Empirical relationships between the control beliefs and intention to engage in research and actual research engagement will be investigated, which will allow evidence-based interventions, rooted in the qualitative data, to be developed.

摘要

强有力的证据表明，教师教育者 (TE) 应该直接积极地参与研究过程。尽管如此，观察到的研究活动水平相对较低。2014 年，英国教育研究协会 (BERA) 呼吁制定一项将研究型实践融入教师教育的国家战略。先前的研究表明，TE 在从事研究方面遇到了一些障碍。本研究旨在使用计划行为理论的框架，对英国一所新大学的 TE 样本中的控制感和参与研究的能力提供当前和详细的说明。对 16 位 TE 进行了半结构化访谈，以引出研究参与背后的控制信念。至少 25% 的样本提到的信念被定义为可访问的信念，并被保留用于进一步的定性分析。解释性现象学分析揭示了影响从事研究的动机的七个高阶控制因素。具体来说，这些包括缺乏时间、指导不足、合作机会有限、初始教师教育的性质、教师的变化、各种感受（主要是消极的）和不灵活的研究程序。教育学院可以针对这些易于理解的信念来增加研究参与度。在未来的研究中，我们将从更大的 TE 样本中收集有关这些信念的定量数据。