Swedish English Teachers' Perceptions of Research: An Interview Study

Close-to-practice research is known internationally as key to improving the quality of language teaching and to raise teachers’competency. Yet, the field is underdeveloped in Sweden and researchers struggle to establish sustainable relationships with schools and teachers in. Based on semi-structured interviews with a random selection of Swedish ESL teachers, this project aims to investigate their perceptions and attitudes to research in English Studies in general and close-to-practice research in particular in order to find out how they view the benefits of such research, both for themselves and for other stakeholders in Education, as well as for society at large. This study assumes that such an understanding is necessary in the development of partnerships between universities and schools, two forms of education which today have little collaboration. This study also assumes that the views of practising teachers differ from those of researchers and university teachers regarding the value of close-to-practise research. Without an understanding of the perceptions of practising teachers, universities and researchers risk failure in their endeavours to do, and expand, close-to-practise research and practising teachers to experience disappointment. If issues highlighted by practising teachers are taken into consideration by researchers,close-to-practise research has a greater potential to be successful.