THAILAND - "Many universities still teach only research methodology, which makes postgraduate students unable to carry out good research that is applicable to people who make use of research findings," Boonreang Kajornsin, a member of the National Research Council of Thailand's education section, said yesterday.
The NRCT's education section has prepared its first roadmap for educational research to be implemented from 2010-2019. The aim is to give stakeholders guidelines for improving the quality of research studies and applications.
Of all the 106,868 research papers, 15,000 are educational research papers conducted by 10,000 educational researchers, according to the NRCT.
The NRCT presented the roadmap to educational researchers as part of Thailand Research Expo 2010 at the Bangkok Convention Centre at CentralWorld.
The roadmap suggests improving five areas - research management, research agenda, educational researcher production, capacity building by networks of researchers, research dissemination and applications.
Members of the NRCT's education section responsible for drafting the roadmap presented many useful guidelines in each area.
Rawiwan Srikramkran said administration staff at all levels need to follow the same direction in planning research management. National policymakers had to devise a clear strategy and assign an organisation to follow up. Network coordinators in each region of the country had to manage research in line with the strategy, while people at organisational levels should use their research findings to improve their organisations as learning organisations.
Pennee Narot called for the educational research agenda to be made clear. Educators should brainstorm and survey problems from practitioners to reflect real problems and make a clear agenda, which could help attract the attention of people in different sections to sponsor their research.
Boonreang said the postgraduate curriculum should be changed to improve research quality. Postgraduates should be taught methodology along with contents of other fields.
The roadmap urged experienced researchers to pass on their knowledge and experience to their juniors by conducting research together, she said. Higher education institutions should build a network in the form of collaborative research with schools, and act as the schools' research mentors by training teachers how to conduct research effectively.
Students who also act as research assistants should be funded so they can learn from conducting real research, she added.
For capacity-building of researchers, networks are important. Somkid Promjui said schoolteachers and administrators did not have enough knowledge and understanding to carry out beneficial research. So, local networks across the country should play a key role in giving them assistance and sharing experiences with them.
"Educational research networks in our country are not strong enough due to insufficient and irregular budget allocations. More budgets will strengthen the networks," he said.
Organisations allocating research budgets had to impose conditions that force researchers to conduct beneficial research, and disseminate and apply the findings to help people, Koson Meekhun said.
The roadmap urges researchers to work with more local people when doing research, and utilise their findings to help improve grassroots' lives, he added.
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