a study into iranian efl teachers’ perceptions of and engagement with action research

A considerable body of research on action research has found that one cannot simply be fed knowledge. we need to construct our own meaning of the world, using information we have gathered and taught and our own experiences with the world (e.g., bransford &vye, 1989; wittrock, 1991). thus, a teacher cannot just be a teacher to repeat back information s/he has received. teachers must also be asked to look deep into their classes to accurately construct meaning of a body of research about what they have observed and experienced. furthermore, teachers must be given the opportunity to engage in the construction of research. action teacher-researchers not only serve as teachers but also as vehicles for doing research comprehensively. with this view, the aim of this study is to find out the perceptions and engagements of iranian efl teachers toward action research in their efl settings. to this aim, a mixed method approach was applied using a questionnaire adapted from borg (2006, 2010) and morales et al. (2016), and a researcher-constructed semi-structured interview to probe into the attitudes and engagements of iranian efl teachers toward action research. the participants of this study included 59 iranian high school efl teachers in quantitative phase and 10 efl teachers in qualitative phase of this research project. the statistical and thematic analyses of both quantitative and qualitative data showed that the participant teachers were generally not able to use action research as the way to do using spss and nvivo, respectively showed that they mostly believed that action research should be taught in universities and educational seminars to help teachers being action researchers. the findings are discussed in the light of literature. this study had some implications and suggestions for administrators and teachers.