An investigation into teacher research engagement and sustainability as a professional development tool in higher education

AN INVESTIGATION INTO TEACHER RESEARCH ENGAGEMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY AS A PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TOOL IN HIGHER EDUCATION ABSTRACT In this study, with the intention of overcoming the barriers to teacher research engagement and sustainability, it is aimed to find out the factors that facilitate and hinder teachers' engagement into teacher research, whether the impacts of doing teacher research and teachers' efforts to do research are sustained over time, and, if so, what those are and how those are sustained. For this purpose, a study with mixed methods case study design has been carried out with 33 EFL instructors at a state university. In order to provide in-depth data for different research questions, four different study groups have been formed. The study started with a relatively larger group (n=33) formed with maximum diversity sampling method, which included both instructors who carried out teacher research before and instructors with no experience of it to describe the case in detail. Then, the group gradually narrowed into a group (n=10) with extreme case sampling to carry out interviews to gain in-depth understanding of the motivators, demotivators and conditions for engaging in teacher research, then into another group (n=7) with homogeneous sampling to gain in-depth understanding of the experiences of instructors who carried out teacher research. Finally, with the criterion sampling method, the final study group (n=4) was formed to question the sustainable impacts of teacher research and what contributed to the sustainability of these. Two questionnaires consisting of closed and open-ended questions and interviews carried out with semi-structured forms have been used as data collection tools. The qualitative data have been analyzed by content analysis, while frequency analysis has been carried out for the quantitative data. The results of the study have shown that workplace conditions, limitations in instructors' awareness, beliefs, skills and knowledge about teacher research and economic matters contribute to the most-frequently-mentioned barrier, the lack of time to do research. Instructors' individual characteristics, project conditions, and a number of workplace conditions (opportunities for teacher research, expert support and colleagues with teacher research experience or postgraduate degrees) are the factors triggering teacher research engagement. The conditions for teacher research are intrinsic motivation, time, institutional encouragement and support, and knowledge and skills in conducting research. It is concluded that impacts of teacher research on the instructors are substantial and these have persisted despite the four-year-period and manifest themselves in the instructors' current practices and student achievement levels. Instructors' need for professional development, positive experience with teacher research (a sense of achievement and observed positive outcomes on students' language development), conducting projects relevant to their goals, concerns and context, and having the opportunity to share their research results through various dissemination forms have facilitated the sustainability of instructors' efforts to conduct teacher research and the impact of former research projects. Lack of time, managements' lack of expectation from instructors to engage in professional development and management's lack of support for their efforts to be research engaged have hindered the sustainability of those efforts and impacts. Keywords: Teacher research in professional development, teacher research engagement, sustainability of teacher research