Teacher Education Students’ Attitude towards Research Studies: A Case Study

Abstract

In today’s world, one of the criteria for progress is research. There can be no progress without research in almost if not all, human endeavors. Thus, a study on teacher education students’ attitude towards research was conducted. Descriptive-correlation was employed using the Attitude toward Research Scale administered to 173 participants. Statistical tools such as mean, standard deviation, ranking and PPM were used to answer problems in this study. Results show that teacher education students were moderately negative towards research and research relevance to life. However, they are moderately positive towards research usefulness. On the other hand, they have a low level of research anxiety and research difficulties. Considering gender and curriculum, teacher education students were almost the same in their attitude towards research. However, females and those on the BSEd students are more positive than BEEd. Furthermore, the insufficient background was ranked first as research related factors while difficulty in analyzing and interpreting data was ranked first in terms of statistics-related factors. Teacher factor was also ranked first considering other related factors. Results also show that attitude towards research is related to students lack of interest, anxiety in conducting research, research relevance to life, and teacher factor. These findings reflect that teacher education students are not yet ready to engrossed research as a subject. Along this line, professors/instructors handling research subject should motivate teacher education students to develop positive attitude towards research. They are not only educators soon, but they are also future researchers.