CABARAN MELESTARIKAN KEPIMPINAN PENYELIDIKAN DI INSTITUT PENDIDIKAN GURU DI MALAYSIA: SATU KAJIAN AWAL

Abstract

The demand to create world-class education presents a challenge to the Teacher Education Institute in Malaysia in producing quality teacher trainees. Therefore, the Institute of Teacher Education needs to change its organizational structure as a whole. Recently, research-related structures have received less attention due to misconceptions about the contribution of the research field in education. They stated that the field of research was simply spending the budget for travel. Therefore, there is a need for a study that explores the challenges in sustaining research leadership at the Malaysian Teacher Education Institutes. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, qualitative methods were conducted through face-to-face interview sessions with six study participants comprising lecturers from Teacher Education Institutes in urban and rural areas who directly participated in research. The research data were analysed using thematic analysis method. The findings of the study reported that there were several themes that have been identified related to the challenges of preserving research leadership, namely (i) negative attitudes towards research activities, (ii) workload, (iii) lack of exposure to research knowledge, (iv) time constraints, (v) lack of support: funds and facilities, and (vi) unsupportive organizational structure. The findings of this study are able to give exposure especially to the stakeholders such as lecturers about the challenges that exist in cultivating research leadership in Teacher Education Institutes in Malaysia.