2. Research Methodology
2.1 Research Objectives
1) To survey English-teaching problems related to the teachers, students, assessment, curricula and textbooks,
and other factors contributing to successful teaching in secondary schools.
2) To investigate the needs for professional development of English language teachers in those schools.
2.2 Subjects of the Study
This quantitative survey study was conducted on a rather small scale. The sample was thirty-four teachers of
English language from nine schools from three Secondary Educational Service Areas (SESAs) in central
Thailand. There were altogether 77 secondary schools in these SESAs, and three schools were randomly selected
from each SESA. The Head of the Foreign Language Department of each school helped distribute the
questionnaires to all forty-seven English teachers, collect the replied questionaires and post them back to the
researcher the following week. The returning rate of the questionnaire was 72.34%.
2.3 Research Instrument
The questionnaire (in Thai) consisted of three parts:
Part I requested personal information about the teacher and school, the teacher’s qualifications, teaching
experience, workload, and PD experience during the past two years.