Exploratory Study of Obstacles to the Researcher Teacher Program Implementation: A Mixed-method Research

Professional teachers should do research to improve their educational activities. The Teacher Researcher Program, which is currently being implemented in our education system, is an attempt to develop research and action research in education. The aim of this study was to identify the obstacles and problems of implementation of the Teacher Researcher Program from the viewpoint of teacher researchers and school principals in Ilam city. An Exploratory mixed-method was used for research. The data were collected in the qualitative section through interviews and in the quantitative section through a researcher-made questionnaire. The reliability coefficients of the questionnaires were calculated by Cronbach's alpha (α = 0.87) and the validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by 10 educational experts. In order to analyze the data in the qualitative section, open and selective coding methods were used; in the quantitative part, descriptive and inferential methods (t-test) were used. Participants of this research in the qualitative section included 13 researcher teachers and 2 research experts at the Department of Education. In the quantitative part, due to the small number of the community, all 109 teachers and 100 principals were included in the research. Based on quantitative and qualitative results, the Teacher Researcher Program faces some obstacles and problems in various dimensions, such as in-service training and justification classes, resources and facilities, planning, motivation, attitude, knowledge and research skills, information, evaluation, family-student. Applied suggestions are provided.