Graduate Non-Native ELT Students' Perceptions of Research and Research Identities

In Turkey, English language teaching (ELT) graduate programs are becoming pervasive, Turkish native and foreign students are strongly encouraged and admitted to these programs. Throughout these graduate studies, students are anticipated to be engaged in research and develop an identity in addition to their educational role to become successful researchers, to minimize their challenges, and to act as an agent student. Research identity development therefore needs to be explored to achieve these purposes. However, to our best knowledge, no investigation into the ELT graduate students’ research identity and key factors influencing their research proficiency development throughout their graduate studies has been documented. Understanding graduate students’ research experiences and their perceptions can be used as an effective educational instrument to enhance the quality of graduate education and to increase students’ interest in pursuit of the graduate education in ELT. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to explore how graduate students perceive research and their experiences using their identity and epistemic cognition. An adapted version of an open-ended survey rather than interviews taken to obtain a large number of responses from the graduate students in ELT will be used and the responses will be analysed qualitatively.