Building a research culture in Cambodia - Khmer Times (original) (raw)
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Steps to Promote Academic Research in Cambodia
Cambodia Development Center, 2021
Promoting academic research activities in Cambodia is particularly challenging. Not only is there a distinct lack of a strong research culture, but there is also limited public interest in research. This is not to mention the inadequacy of technical, financial and intellectual resources needed to support research, both applied and academic research. This short commentary examines Cambodia's relatively low research performance and suggests ways to nurture the development of a striving research culture in the country. Cambodia's Research Performance Previous research studies have indicated that research capacity of Cambodian universities and their academics are underdeveloped. Moore (2011) noted the struggle to develop a research culture in Cambodia, while Kwok et al. (2010) argued that research was not considered a core mission of Cambodian universities. A survey by Eam (2015) found that 65% of 444 Cambodian lecturers, sampled from 10 universities, did not involve in any research within the last five years before the survey. Kitamura et al.'s (2016) survey revealed a similar finding, that is, research engagement of Cambodian lecturers was limited.
Opinion Why Cambodia Should Aggressively Promote Research Cambodianess
Research is a process or series of steps aimed at collecting and analyzing information to arrive at answers to specific questions. Research enables the creation of new knowledge and facilitates the use of existing knowledge to bring about new findings or discoveries. It also allows for the use of the existing stock of knowledge to create new understandings, concepts and inventions. Research not only helps us to build upon the current body of knowledge, but also empowers us to advance our understanding of the world and beyond.
This paper studies and analyses a policy on research development (PRD) in the education sector in Kingdom of Cambodia. Though the policy does not explicitly define the level of education, this research development policy focuses only on the higher education research in education sector. The paper is organized with introduction, the brief background of education in Cambodia and the PRD policy, the bases of existence of the policy, the benefits and shortcomings for implementation of the policy, and solutions for bettering the policy implementation. The paper will be finished with conclusion and recommendation to particularly Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) and education stakeholders as a whole.
Doing Research in Cambodia: Making Models that Build Capacity
Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, 2016
Cambodia remains a developing country with a poor research environment, due in part to Khmer Rouge destruction of scholars and academic infrastructure in the 1970s and the many subsequent years of rebuilding riddled with political and social instability. Further, contemporary political exigencies create an environment of fear and mistrust that discourages the public from open participation and hampers productive research. The research seeks a comprehensive mapping of the research environment in Cambodia from detailing the policy framework to registering the needs of individual researchers. Our key questions: What and how research is being done, by whom, for what purpose, and with what resources? With the support from the Global Development Network and the ‘Doing Research’ peer review workshop, a research team from the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace (CICP) undertook a one year action research study to capture – and to help transform – the current state of Cambodian research. In early 2015, a roundtable of experts created a list of 25 institutions to interview, including both rural and urban universities (president, senior academic staff, faculty members, researchers, and students), NGOs, think tanks, donor representatives, and government ministries. Our bottom-up approach focused on giving voice to participants and achieving practical problem-solving outputs. It aimed to reduce dependence on donors in the long term by strengthening the endogenous capacity of the research community and improving collaborations between researchers. Our findings show that the primary impediment to research is insufficient funds for research, training, and dissemination. The government cannot adequately fund projects necessary to guide policy decisions, as even the national census is donor financed. Furthermore, instructors and students are generally responsible for funding their own projects. Since universities are tuition-driven, instructors are given little time or money to conduct research. This implicitly communicates that research is a non-critical afterthought. Respondents admitted that many staff lack the ability to conduct research, while dissemination activities are limited. Researchers commonly present findings at academic workshops. Therefore findings, embedded in reports, often overly technical and written in English, remain largely inaccessible to wider audiences. English proficiency proved another obstacle, preventing many Cambodian researchers from conducting literature reviews and increasing their workload when translating results for publication. With few academic publications, no accessible research database, and insufficient provincial libraries, research outreach is severely limited. And, since reports are written using technical English, it is unclear whom the research is targeting. Due to funding and human resource limitations, most research is dictated by donors, led by outside consultants, and financed on a short-term basis. Consequently, local capacity is stunted and short-term studies do not capture complex societal issues adequately. Donor institutions are often reticent to tackle controversial issues or report results without government consent. Cambodian research production is at a transitional stage. While we found general ambivalence toward research among older interviewees, younger Cambodians demonstrated a growing enthusiasm and receptivity. Few women participated in our study due to gender imbalance in senior positions. Equal opportunity policies and equal access to education are needed to reverse this trend. However, Cambodia is improving; as evidenced by the increasing number of female students in tertiary education.
New Hope for a Research Culture in Cambodia
Cambodia Development Center, 2020
Despite the widespread news and pessimism regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, a glimpse of hope has emerged in Cambodia. It is a new hope for the development of a research culture.
Cambodia Education Review (CER), 2018
This review paper examines four studies that tap into the current state and challenges of Cambodia research capacities. These four studies identify systemic gaps in Cambodia research capacities. However, they also acknowledge some positive changes of research development endeavors at certain Cambodian institutions. The remaining challenges include issues of the capitalization and utilization of financial resources, the optimization of academic infrastructure and culture, political influences, and individual and collective research competencies. These challenges make up an ecosystem that decelerates all kinds of research development endeavors in Cambodia, such as building a research culture, developing research competencies, increasing research productivity and commercializing research outputs. The four studies, therefore, suggest both systemic changes and programmatic interventions directed towards different stakeholders at different levels, from generating research funding to systemizing academic careers and creating long-term collaborative research development platforms. These studies reveal many practical truths and are thus basic groundworks for further, more focused and more analytical research studies on the topic of research capacities in the Cambodian context.
Higher education in Cambodia Reforms for enhancing universities' research capacities
Academic Praxis, 2021
While Cambodian higher education is facing many challenges (see Heng et al., 2022a; Sol, 2021), the major issue that calls for reforms is a limited research capacity of Cambodian universities and academic staff. This problem needs immediate attention. Policy actions are required to improve the research landscape in the country and empower local academics for a more productive and impactful academic performance. In the following sections, I elaborate on my arguments.
Challenges and developments in university research in Cambodia: a case study of two universities
Higher Education, 2023
In recent years, university research in Cambodia has seen new developments and potential transformations although many challenges remain. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 22 Cambodian academics, this study shows that the development of university research in Cambodia is constrained by various challenges and barriers to research, preventing Cambodia from promoting higher education internationalization and transforming itself into a knowledge-based society. The study highlights key challenges that limit possibilities for further positive developments of higher education research and suggests the need for policy reforms to make a difference to the university research landscape in Cambodia. The study also points to the broader issues of North-South knowledge divide and calls for national and institutional initiatives to support Cambodian academics and empower them to enhance their research engagement. Finally, the study discusses implications for future research.