Maryam Azizi; Hossein Heidari Tabrizi; Ahmadreza Lotfi
Abstract
Despite its enrichment, the literature on teacher self-efficacy lacks evidential data on the changes in both hidden and observable variables underlying this multifaceted construct. To compensate for this substantial gap, the current study compared patterns of cognition, metacognition, emotion, and behavior ...
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Despite its enrichment, the literature on teacher self-efficacy lacks evidential data on the changes in both hidden and observable variables underlying this multifaceted construct. To compensate for this substantial gap, the current study compared patterns of cognition, metacognition, emotion, and behavior across three groups of Iranian EFL teachers with scant, moderate, and considerable teaching experience. 382 Iranian EFL teachers participated in the current study, filling out five well-established survey instruments targeted at measuring pedagogical knowledge, teaching reflection, motivational needs satisfaction, teaching styles use, and work engagement. The survey data were compared across the three groups based on a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). According to the results, the groups differed significantly on a linear combination of the five variables. The discriminant function analysis (DFA) results showed that pedagogical knowledge and motivational needs satisfaction acted as a concordant pair and explained the heaviest load of the overall between-group differences. The significantly higher levels of pedagogical knowledge and motivational needs satisfaction among the moderately experienced teachers, compared to those of their less and more experienced counterparts, suggested that Iranian EFL teachers’ sense of efficacy reaches its peak in the middle years of teaching life. The findings may provide new insights into the ways of setting English teachers of various experiential backgrounds on the road to optimum efficacy.
Farzad Mashhadi; Reza Biria; Ahmadreza Lotfi
Abstract
The preparation of English teachers to teach is a complex and multitudinous undertaking. Traditionally, in line with positivist paradigm which has focused on notion of transfer, teacher education has been concerned with depositing bodies of pre-defined information to teachers and has considered teachers ...
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The preparation of English teachers to teach is a complex and multitudinous undertaking. Traditionally, in line with positivist paradigm which has focused on notion of transfer, teacher education has been concerned with depositing bodies of pre-defined information to teachers and has considered teachers as that of knowledge consumers. As an alternative to traditional, transmission-based view of teacher education, action research has emerged as a practical tool to enhance meaningful second language (L2) teacher education. In line with the current epistemological shift, this study set out to examine the utility of collaborative action research, as a viable means, to boost teachers’ professional development in a networked community of shared practice. To this end, 7 male and female Iranian English teachers, aged 22—35, were selected through convenient sampling from different universities in Iran. Having been added to a teacher training group in WhatsApp, the selected participants were exposed to online classes within which they learned to problematize a context-specific topic and were provided with relevant practical experiences through dialogic mediation. Having been taught to go through circles of action research throughout the treatment, the participants were required to complete an action research project. The data triangulated from four main sources (i.e., action research projects, teachers’ professional journals, reflective journals, and semi-structured interviews), revealed that EFL teachers engaged in a collaborative dialogue in a networked community of shared knowledge appeared to sustain L2 professional development, transforming their pedagogical practice and feeling empowered to move toward a more emancipatory perspective. The findings have important implications for language teachers in general, and EFL teachers and syllabus designers, in particular.
