رضا خانی

Although decades of research have well elaborated on teacher professional development, we still do not have a thorough picture about what teacher professional development could entail and what components it consists of. The present study aims to develop and validate a teacher professional development scale in an Iranian English foreign language context. An initial tentative model with 130 items was piloted and tested through exploratory and confirmatory data analyses on a sample of 400 EFL teachers. This level resulted in the removal of 28 items in our sample loaded, resulting in a final 102 teacher professional development inventory. The developed inventory measures the extent to which EFL teachers are professionally developed and makes teachers aware of multiple characteristics of professionally developed teachers. These competencies are essential components of teacher professional development, enabling the teachers to utilize them in everyday teaching and learning practices in the classroom settings which, as a result, leads to student achievement. As teachers fulfill important professional roles, they need valid instruments to assess their day-to-day functioning in the class. With the instrument developed and validated in the current research, we, in fact, allow language teachers to assess their extent of professional development in different pedagogical contexts.

In spite of the significant role of teachers in the efficacy of classroom management particularly in teaching English as a Foreign Language, the issue has not been addressed sufficiently especially in relation with other individual variables. Hence, this study made an attempt to investigate the association between Iranian EFL teachers’ classroom management, reflective thinking and transformational leadership style. 247 English Foreign Language teachers took part in the study. To measure the variables of the study, Teachers Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001), Reflective Thinking Scale (Choy & Oo, 2012) and Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire(Avolio, Bass & Jung, 1995) were used. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied to test the hypothesized model of associations. After confirming the hypothesized model (= 1.275; RMSEA=.02; RMR =.03; GFI =.97; AGFI =.93; NFI =.97; CFI =.99; IFI =.99), the results revealed significant internal correlations among the main as well as the sub-scales of the study. Multiple regression analysis further confirmed the direction of the path model proposed for the study. Generally, it was concluded that reflective thinking and transformational leadership improve teachers' efficacy of classroom management which, in turn, facilitates teaching processes. Implications are discussed.