Descripción de los libros de texto pertenecientes a la época de la Reforma de las

A great deal of the interview time was spent discussing participants’ feelings when they

183 the value of research emerged: perceptions about the value of research as a part of lecturers’ jobs; and perceptions about the quality of the research.

Value of Research

It is clear that all university contexts put a high value on research while academic staff members are encouraged to produce and publish research at both national and international levels. It is interesting to note that only one out of the 19 EFL participating lecturers from two universities indicated that he did not want to conduct research because he felt research was not part of teaching. However, the rest of the participants believed that research was an important part of their job as lecturers, although they exhibited different beliefs about how they view research and the time they spent on their

research. In this study, the participating EFL lecturers’ feeling about the value of research involvement can be categorised into two aspects (see Figure 7.1).

Figure 7.1. Value of research involvement

Research Highly Valued

Six out of thirteen participants at Rak University mentioned that research was crucial for their teaching practice and they wanted to become a teacher researcher. This kind of belief is clearly illustrated in the cases of Mint, Pim, and Vit. These three participants placed high value on research and believed that lecturers should spend most of their time on research rather than teaching. Vit was also interested in gaining academic status (assistant professor) as a result of producing quality research that met the international standard (publishing in an international journal). These three participants illustrated strong beliefs that research was a large part of their job as lecturers but only two of them

Value placed on research

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(Mint and Vit) were concerned about the importance of research to advance their academic status.

Despite a favourable view of research, it is interesting to note that Mint was the only lecturer who mentioned that teaching needed less quality. She commented that she did not have to spend her time preparing and being concerned about her teaching quality. This implies that there was no teaching assessment in her faculty and she did not have to worry whether or not she provided good quality teaching. For Mint, research appeared to have more value in the university than any other duties. This reflects a point made by Boyer (1990) who claims that research and publication is considered to be more popular and important than teaching and service within higher education institutions because these activities are prioritised for evaluation. In addition, there is no widely accepted method for evaluating teaching quality within higher education (Altbach, 2006). This may explain why Mint appeared to ignore her teaching responsibility. She was aware of the value of research and spent her time producing and

increasing her research productivity. However, Mint’s feeling towards teaching is not a

good sign for teaching and educational processes because research should be done to increase the knowledge of lecturers and to improve their teaching practice. As

Cheetham (2007) notes, “it [research] should be the fundamental support of our

teaching” (p. 3).

Research Lowly Valued

Even though the data suggests that EFL lecturers needed more time to conduct research, some of the participating EFL lecturers presented a strong belief that research was less

important than teaching. This was clearly illustrated in both Rin’s case and the focus

group participants. Research, in their perception, should be conducted to increase their professional competence, not to advance academic status. For instance, Rin stated that research was not a big part of her teaching job and she wanted to undertake research

only when she needed new knowledge to enhance her students’ learning outcomes. This is supported by Timperley and Phillips (2003) who asserted that teachers need to understand the nature of the task and develop their skills through different ways of teaching which may include research. One focus group participant also mentioned that research was just a small component of her job as a lecturer at Jaidee University.

185 Indeed, the focus group participants in general indicated that they did not think about their career advancement as their current research did not meet the standard in terms of its quality.

It is interesting to note that each of the views above tends to be clustered around particular participants that had a similar educational background. For the first view (research is a priority) Mint, Pim and Vit had a similar educational background. Both

Mint and Vit had obtained master’s degrees with linguistics or literature as a major,

while Pim and Vit had also studied in the U.S. after they had obtained their master’s

degrees. Participants who had low value for research had a different educational

background. Rin and the focus group participants had all studied for a master’s degree

with teaching Englishas a major. This implies that the nature of lecturers’ educational

backgrounds had an impact on their beliefs. As Zeichner and Tabachnick (1981) assert, the time teachers spend as students at the university shapes their beliefs and influences their teaching in their own classroom. It seems that the educational background of participants in this study could have affected the way they thought and felt about their research work, and whether research or teaching was a priority.

Quality of Research

During the interviews, lecturers’ perceptions of the characteristics of quality research

emerged. In particular, several participants stressed the importance in conducting quantitative research to increase the quality of research. For example, Rin expressed her view that the quality of research should come from procedures that control for bias. In addition, one focus group participant defined quality research as large scale research that received a large amount of money and involved many participants. Good quality research in their minds therefore appeared to relate to quantitative research, objectivity, a large-scale sample, and a large amount of research funding. This situation is in line with the studies by McDonough and McDonough (1997), and Borg (2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2008) who found that the notion of quality research by English teaching staff, in both English-speaking countries and in non-English-speaking countries, relied on the

quantitative research tradition which is related to “objectivity, hypothesis testing, the

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It could therefore be said that the participants’ perceived concept of quality research was perhaps influenced by international standards.

In addition to the emphasis on quantitative research that emerged, participants also mentioned that publications were one of the key criteria for quality research. This reflects the finding that research publications are considered to be one of the international standard criteria to gain promotion (see Chapter 4). For example, in English-speaking countries (the UK, the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand) as well as in non-English-speaking countries (China, Japan, and Thailand), research publications are important for faculty evaluation and promotion decisions within higher education institutions.

Generally, participating EFL lecturers agreed that publications were important to the research process. It may be possible to say that EFL lecturers were concerned about their research quality and believed that they should produce quality research by employing quantitative methods and disseminating their research findings. However, only Vit published his research findings in an international journal. Other participants appeared to not be able to publish their research findings. For example, Mint had not been able to produce research that met international standards despite her desire to publish research in international journals. It is somewhat surprising that she had completed five research projects but none of them was published even in local journals. Furthermore, none of the focus group participants had published their research in any local or international journals. Two focus group participants mentioned that their research was not in-depth and of good quality. However, it is also possible that participants had insufficient English skills, particularly for international publications. As Wiriyachitra (2002) notes, Thai people have below average English language competency. This may include EFL lecturers in the current study although they used English only in their classrooms.

Another possible explanation for the lack of research publication may be the lack of an advanced degree (PhD). All of the participating EFL staff, including the participating

lecturers of both Rak University and Jaidee University, had master’s degrees in the area

of English or Teaching English (see Section 3.5 on selection of EFL lecturer case studies). These findings seem to accord with a study by Pabhapote (1996) who found that those Thai academic staff across a range of faculties in Srinakharinwirot University

187 (Prasarnmit Campus) who had a PhD produced more research publications than faculty

staff who held only master’s or bachelor’s degrees. However, according to the OHEC,

the majority of Thai academic staff members across faculties, including EFL lecturers in

most of the Thai higher education institutions, have only master’s degrees (58%) and

only 30% of academic staff have PhDs (Thai's Higher Education for All, 2010). Therefore, it is possible that the lack of a PhD degree may affect the level of research publications of not only EFL lecturers in this study, but also other EFL lecturers and academic staff across faculties in other Thai higher education institutions.