Building a culture of research at a language department in Mexico

Maria del Rocio Dominguez, Jitka Crhová & Myriam Romero Monteverde, Mexico, ID CLEaR2016-350;     The purpose of this paper is to describe the process to develop research culture at a language department in Mexico, which is closely related to nation-wide educational policy changes. This process has implied the development of academic literacy and research skills within a specific institutional context that has shaped the way language teachers have developed academically. This work is part of a study that was conducted to identify the factors that have affected the development of research in the field of language teaching. To research this process, a mixed methods design was used since data of different nature was going to be gathered. The study allowed us to acknowledge the processes these teachers went through at a language department within a specific policy framework. We also found that two of the main obstacles these teachers have encountered while developing research in this field are lack of time and distribution of their workload. We could also identify some patters in these professors’ literacy development stories which show the way institutional policies have shaped their development processes as they were directed towards research and academic production.

Key words: Research culture- language teachers- academic literacy- researching language learning and teaching