Attitude Towards Research Of Prospective Teacher Educators

Abstract

The main aim of the present study was to examine the mean significant difference exists between the attitude towards research and its dimensions of prospective teacher educators with respect to media of accessing communication and previous teaching experience as demographic variables. In order to support the above fact nearly sixty five studies conducted both in state, regional, national and global level were reviewed. The investigator constructed and validated research attitude scale with five dimensions in the areas of research usefulness, anxiety, preference, relevancy to life and difficulty in research.  Then it was used to measure the attitude toward research of 640 prospective teacher educators who were randomly selected from twenty seven numbers of colleges in five districts (Coimbatore, Dharmapuri, Erode, Namakkal, and Salem) of Tamilnadu, India through simple survey methodology. The data was scored, tabulated, and analysed with the help of SPSS.16.00 version of software package. Statistical analysis like descriptive and differential analysis has been carried out for suitable interpretation. The attitude towards research was average with respect to whole sample. The present study further confirmed that both demographic variables as in total and it dimensions doesn’t influence the main variable significantly thereby confirming that framed hypotheses are to be retained except few dimensions (research anxiety,  research preference, and relevancy to life) in the case of teaching experience. Further in-depth analysis confirmed that teaching experience influences the research anxiety, research preference and relevancy to life dimensions of attitude towards research significantly. This required more concentration on different strategies to be developed and implemented at the teacher education training program at post graduate level.