Understanding research engagement of Thai teacher educators: A case study of a National Research University

Abstract

Research of university teachers, including teacher educators, has received growing expectations worldwide over the previous three decades. Despite the wealth of literature regarding the research activities of mainstream university teachers, an in-depth understanding of teacher educators’ research activities from policy to implementation is lacking in the literature. This qualitative case study explores how research of teacher educators in an autonomous national research university in Thailand is promoted and how they practice. Triangulated data were gained from semi-structured interviews with four university executives and 12 teacher educators, related documents, and the teacher educators’ published research articles. The integrated approach of deductive and inductive content analysis reveals two main gaps: one between the policy expectation and support provided, and another between the policy expectation and teacher educators’ real practice. Despite the policy expectations of interdisciplinary research, teacher educators received relatively less support for expanding research networks, and the largest portion of their research was related to the field of education. They produced research as educational researchers and teacher education scholars. Apart from a mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, social belongingness within research teams was observed as a reason for their research engagement. Obstacles were limited time, complicated procedures for the research ethics approval, and difficulties derived from the policy stress on interdisciplinary research. The study suggests critically analyzing the issues of over-emphasis on interdisciplinary research and international publications, and reconsidering “what for?” of teacher educators’ research.