Challenges of Action Research: Insights From Language Institutes

Action research is a small-scale intervention in the functioning of the real world to address practitioners’ own issues and carry out a close examination of the effects of such an intervention. Classroom-based research, or action research, can be the viable solution to some pandemic academic sluggishness and scientific apathy. However, the erroneous impression that research is an elite discipline belonging to certain talented or conversely boring individuals who always constrain themselves to their desks dissuades some teachers from engaging with action research in the local contexts. This small scale qualitative study was an attempt to investigate the reasons that hamper the Iranian EFL teachers teaching in language institutes to do action research.  To this end, a total of 12 Iranian EFL teachers (8 females and 4 males) were chosen through the convenience sampling procedure to take part in the study. The semistructured individual interviews were used to gather the data. Results of the content analysis revealed that such factors as (a) attitude toward action research, (b) lack of fund and support, (c) lack of cooperation among colleagues, and (d) lack of knowledge and confidence in doing action research led to the teachers’ apathy in regard to doing action research.