Involvement of Secondary School teachers in Educational Research in Afar Regional State
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Date
2004-05
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Addis Ababa Universty
Abstract
The main purpose of this study is to examine the current status of secondGl)'
school teachers' involvement in educational research in Afar Regional State and
to identifY the major impediments that hinder teachers from research undertaking.
To achieve this objective, a descriptive survey method was employed. In this study,
data were collected ji"Oln teachers, principals, zonal and regional education
officials through questionl1aire and interview. Questionnaire consisting oj" 40
items was distributed to 92 secondary school teachers who are working in thefive
schools of Afar Region. From the distributed questionnaire 93.5 %(86) of them
were filled in and returned. Interviews were conducted with five school principals,
two zonal and one regional education officials. The secured data through these
instruments were analyzed using narrative description, percentage, mean, chisquare,
t-test and one way repeated measure ANOVA.
The findings of the study revealed that almost half of the respondent teachers did
not take research methodology course while they were in higher institutions. Even
from those teachers who took the course, 35.42% of them assured that the training
they took was not adequate to enable them undertake educational research. On
top of this, concerned bodies in the region did not provide training in research for
these teachers in the form of workshop, seminar or in-service training in order to
up-grade their research knowledge. In addition to this, there were no up-to-date
reference materials that acquaint teachers with research methodology, there were
no Budgets allocated for research; there was no research coordinating body in
zonal, woreda or school level and incentives were not provided for teachers who
were engaged in research. Although almost all of the teachers in the sample
schools have a positive attitude and interest towards conducting educational
research, only 5.95% of them were engaged in educational research due to the
reasons mentioned above. The major constraints that block teachers from carrying
out research activities were therefore, lack of conducive environment for research,
lack of support from concerned authorities, lack of experience in how to do
educational research and lack of materials for research. Generally, the factors
collected enabled to make a conclusion that the research involvement of
secondary school teachers of this region was found to be low. Therefore, to
popularize and promote research activities of secondary school teachers of this
region, it is recommended that Afar Region Education Bureau should up-grade
teachers' knowledge and skills by organizing and conducting in-service training,
workshop or seminar in sustained fashion. In addition to this, concerned bodies
need to create favorable conditions for research by allocating fund for research,
by equipping school libraries with recent reference materials and by providing
sufficient stationery for teacher researchers
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Keywords
Educational Research