Examining The Correlation Between Pre-service English Teachers’ Attitude Towards Educational Research And Research Engagement

The idea "teachers as researchers" has been widely accepted in educational context for its potential to improve teaching practice and students’ learning.Pre-service teachers,as teachers to-be,are expected to hold positive attitude towards educational research and be research-engaged so as to better fulfill the dual identities of being teachers and researchers in the future.A considerable amount of studies have been conducted concerning in-service teachers’ research attitude and their research engagement in recent years.However,there is a paucity of investigations into the correlation between teachers’ attitude towards educational research and their research engagement,among which,only a dearth of studies have paid attention to pre-service teachers and even less to pre-service English teachers.In response to this research lacuna,the present study aims to examine the correlation between pre-service English teachers’ attitude towards educational research and research engagement in the hope that this study can yield valuable insights into possible ways to promote pre-service English teachers’ research engagement.The study is centered on the following three questions:1.What attitude do pre-service English teachers hold towards educational research?2.What is the level of pre-service English teachers’ research engagement?What are the contributing factors to it?3.What,if any,is the correlation between pre-service English teachers’ attitude towards educational research and research engagement?The study was undertaken in Central China Normal University and a total of 61 pre-service English teachers were investigated.A mixed research method including questionnaire and semi-structured interview was employed to fulfill the research aim.The major findings were summarized as follows:1.In general,pre-service English teachers hold a positive attitude towards educational research.Compared to their positive cognitive understanding of educational research and high level of research tendency,their affect and self-efficacy concerning educational research are in medium level and need improvement.2.A rather low research engagement among pre-service English teachers is found concerning reading educational research,attending educational research activities and doing educational research.The contributing factors revealed in this study are mainly concerned with their deficiency of research ability influenced by the M.Ed.courses and their own research initiative,the absence of institutional requirement and support,limited supervisors’ help and insufficient research atmosphere around them.3.There is a positive but weak correlation between pre-service English teachers’ attitude towards educational research and their research engagement.Some implications were put forward concerning both pre-service English teachers and teacher training program including course design,teaching methodology,lecture arrangement and supervisors’ support.