Some Observations about the effectiveness of the research methodology component of the graduate education in TEFL

Abstract

This paper is based on an earlier stage of a research project intended to assess the performance of students in research methodology with a view to cataloguing successes and failures in the research component of the training offered to students as part of their graduate education. More specifically, drawing on a subset of data gathered for the main study, the paper reports some preliminary results of an exploratory study aimed at assessing the adequacy and effectiveness the research component of the curriculum for the MA programme in TEFL which is run by the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of AAU. In exploring the relative success of this component of the training, this particular piece of research has confined itself to a measure of student performance in the design and development of instruments for data collection. Data for this paper were obtained from the research-related work produced by students at three distinct phases in the training process: the proposal writing, the thesis writing and the oral defence stages. The overwhelming finding of this research is that students’ output appeared to suffer from many flaws in design and logic. The results also suggest that students are unable to demonstrate the knowledge and skills deemed necessary for the effective use of data collection tools for research purposes. More importantly, there appeared to be gaps in their ability to apply research skills ranging from seemingly mundane but absolutely crucial ones to the more advanced ones.