EFL faculty members’ research engagement: voices from Iran

ABSTRACT

This nationwide study examines the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) faculty members’ engagement in and with research in a major site of EFL context by surveying a representative sample of 140 faculty members. Further, the correlation between the respondents’ levels of engagement in and with research and their demographic features concerning academic position and years of experience was investigated. Our findings demonstrate the respondents’ high levels of engagement with reading research and engagement in doing research in several aspects. Furthermore, the reasons for reading and doing research were discussed. The findings of the study point to a number of institutional, procedural, instrumental facilitators and suppressors to research engagements. Interestingly, the EFL faculty members perceived a significant gap between their expectations of, and management support for, doing research. Finally, pedagogical implications of the nature of the engagement are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Applied linguistics
• faculty members
• higher education
• research engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The suffix ‘graph’ denotes a description of approaches. According to Marton (1986), it is ‘a research method for mapping the qualitatively different ways in which people experience, conceptualise, perceive, and understand various aspect of, phenomena in, the world around them’ (p. 31).

2. The questionnaire is available through IRIS repository for L2 instrument (https://www.iris-database.org).

3. Another article entitled ‘Exploring EFL Applied Linguists’ Conceptions of Research: A Mixed Methods Study’ was published in the Foreign Language Research Journal. This article was based on the same dataset but with a different research focus.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mohammad Amini Farsani

Mohammad Amini Farsani is an assistant professor in Applied Linguistics at Iran University of Science and Technology. His main areas of interest are research synthesis, mixed methods research, and argumentative writing.

Esmat Babaii

Esmat Babaii is an associate professor in Applied Linguistics at Kharazmi University. Her areas of research are language testing, research methods, and discourse analysis. She has published in Language Testing, System, and Modern Language Journal.