Using Logbook to Promote Student-Teachers’ Autonomy in Conducting Research

This action research study aims to examine the use of logbooks to promote student-teacher autonomy in conducting their research. Teacher education is a key factor in the transformation of the education quality in Cambodia. Research has become a core mission of Phnom Penh Teacher Education College (PTEC). To promote research culture and to encourage research conducted within teacher education, research is integrated into the year 3 syllabus of PTEC in 2020. All student teachers have to prepare their research proposal within semester 2 of year 3 while each PTEC year 4 student-teacher needs to conduct action research as a part of requirements for their graduation. Since conducting research is very new for them, student-teachers have encountered a major difficulty in managing their research work process. They are not independent in doing their work but they tend to rely so much on their supervisors instead. Therefore, the researcher would like to introduce a logbook to promote year 4 student-teacher autonomy in conducting their research. There were 10 student-teachers in both primary and secondary level (12+4) programs of Phnom Penh Teacher Education College (PTEC) participated in this study. They were divided into 2 groups based on their academic year: 6 of them are in the 2022 cohort while 4 of them are in the 2023 cohort. Observations and semi-structured interviews were used as tools for data collection in this study. To see whether using a logbook is effective, the researcher introduced a logbook to student-teachers at the beginning of their year 4 and before they started conducting their research. The findings clearly showed that the logbook not only promoted student-teacher autonomy in conducting research but also encouraged them to read more. Therefore, the researcher would recommend all educational research lecturers start introducing their year 3 student teachers and all supervisors to introduce logbooks to their student-teachers too.