Elementary School Teachers’ Approaches Towards Educational Research

Teachers, like all individuals, have to follow the developments in their field to increase their professional competencies and transfer the received knowledge to application area. The sources which offer the current knowledge from education field to use of teachers are educational researches. In this context, approaches of teachers intended for educational research are thought as important, and determining these approaches is consisted of the purpose of this study. The study; in a survey model, is a descriptive research. Sample of the study is composed of 206 elementary school teachers from Çanakkale. The questionnaire developed by Borg (2009) was used as a measurement instrument. In data analysis, descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, etc. were used and assessed distributions according to different characteristics of teachers. Following educational research (f=116; %56,30) and doing research (f=107; %51,90) by teachers are in ‘Sometimes’ level. By teachers, “thinking as good for professional development” and “enjoying with doing research” as causes of doing research, and “lacking of time” and “doing research is not my main task” as causes of not doing research are indicated. Besides, “researchers should be objective” and “educational researches should give new ideas for use of teachers” are the most important features of educational research according to teachers. Fourth (f=113; %54,9) and second scenarios (f=108; %52,4) among ten research scenarios are marked mostly as “Definitely Research”. Additionally, teachers have expectations like their work intensity should be arranged to provide time for doing research and they should be supported for participating to conferences related their educational field. As a result, teachers’ approaches towards educational research are positive but their following research and doing research incidences are not in desired level that can be said.