This article reports on one aspect of a larger study which aimed to explore the context-specific experiences of English teachers at tertiary institutions in China (Wette & Barkhuizen, 2007). Data were collected during a professional development program run in the summer of 2006. The program aimed to cover recent trends in the field of second language teaching and learning and consisted of six courses. The author taught two of these, one of them focusing on research methodology. This course aimed to introduce teachers to qualitative research methods, including finding a research topic, collecting and analysing qualitative data, and writing research reports. As part of the research project, and in order to generate research topics for the teachers, they were invited to identify, through means of a narrative frame, a problem they had encountered in their work environments. They were asked to consider the type and aim of a research project which might be undertaken in order to investigate the problem, and they were asked to suggest potential constraints which may hinder successful planning and completion of the proposed project. In doing so, teachers were encouraged to reflect on their experiences in their own working contexts in relation to what they were currently experiencing during the professional development program's research methodology course. The findings of the study thus reflect this perspective. This article reports on those findings. It also provides a brief background to English teaching at the tertiary level in China, describes the methods used to collect and analyse the data, and suggests some implications of the study. (Contains 4 tables. This article was edited by Ali Shehadah and John Levis.)