Master in Education Student Attitudes towards Research: A Comparison between Two Public Sector Universities in Punjab

ABSTRACTIn modern world, attitudes of people are considered more important than their experiences and academic preparation. A positive attitude towards research is a key to success and progress in the knowledge based societies. This study explored the student teacher attitudes towards research. The sample consisted of 194 participants from two public universities of Pakistan and it was taken by using census sampling technique. The participants were Master in Education students in their second semester. The Attitude towards Research scale was used for data collection. The scale was consisted of 30 items which were divided into five factors: research usefulness, research anxiety, positive attitudes, relevance to life, and research difficulties. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test and ANOVA. The results showed that student teachers have a negative attitude towards research. A significant difference was found in the attitudes with respect to the type of program and prior areas of specialization. The paper demonstrates a clear need for focus on research into student teacher attitudes towards research. Low student teacher attitudes have negative impact on the pupils. The ability of teacher education programs to alleviate the problem has wide-spread implications. The paper produces empirical evidence about the low student teacher attitudes towards research and raises questions relevant to teacher preparation role of the teacher education programs in developing higher attitudes towards research.KEY WORDS: Research Attitude, Student Teacher, attitudes toward research, knowledge based societies, teacher education.IntroductionTraditionally, teaching has been characterized by the acts that involve various activities that help younger people to learn (Szucs, 2009). It involves planning and delivering lessons, marking class and home work, and examining students' progress. Teachers, traditionally, were not expected to undertake research in order to explore the problems that they would face in the process of teaching and learning. They have been relying on the experts from other fields such as psychologists, philosophers, mathematicians and scientists for the solutions to their problems. This is evident from the fact that there has been a substantial contribution, to the field of teaching and learning, from the people who were not trained as educationists (Polya, Thorndike, 1910). There has been a shiftin the role of teachers (Scheirer, 2000) and now they are expected to explore the solution, by themselves, to their immediate classroom problems through action research. They are also expected to involve in scientific investigations through rigorous research methods (Peterson, Clark & Dickson, 1990). Zeuli (1992) stated that "research of various types forms the bulwark of teachers' professional preparation". He further said that reading research is imperative for learning to teach. It gives future teachers a vision about the practical implications of different approaches, their validity, rationale for decision making, targeting problems and brining improvements, etc. (The importance of research for education's future, 2011). That is why initial teacher training program has been added courses on research methods and trainee teachers are also expected to culminate their program with a research project.In Pakistan, at Master in Education (MEd), which is an advanced teacher preparation level, the trainee teachers are required to write a thesis on a topic of some educational importance. The students in the MEd program are comprised of in-service teachers and also those who do not have any teaching experience. People are inspired to join MEd program due to a variety of reasons that may include rapid progression in the carrier, advancement in the pedagogical research knowledge and skills, and better status in the society. Majority of the MEd students are naive to carry out a research project. …