Students’ achievement

Recently، interest in research on EFL teaching، CLT-based methodology and materials، and post-method pedagogy has gain momentum in the Iranian mainstream education. This study was conducted; 1) to explore EFL teachers’ attitudes towards the present EFL methodologies and content of high school textbooks; 2) to examine any probable relationship between teachers’ attitudes towards post method pedagogy and their students’ achievement; and 3) to probe any correlation between the teachers’ instructional experience and their attitudes towards the present teaching methods and materials. To this end، a questionnaire was designed to elicit EFL teachers’ beliefs. The subjects were 594 Iranian EFL teachers selected from different cities all over Iran. After the administration of the questionnaire، the data were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistical procedures. The results indicated that: a) the Iranian EFL teachers hold different patterns of attitudes towards the dominant teaching methods and content of high school English textbooks، b) there is no relationship between the teachers’ positive or negative attitudes towards post method and their students’ achievement، and c) more experienced teachers’ attitudes are different from the attitudes held by less-experienced ones.

The present study was intended to investigate possible relationships of the development of EFL teachers’ possible selves with teacher efficacy and students’ achievement. Eighty seven teachers were selected through convenience sampling from different Language Institutes participated in this study and filled in EFL teachers’ Possible Selves Development Questionnaire as well as Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES). The participants were also requested to specify the mean scores of the achievement tests they administered to their students in the previous terms. The results of data analyses indicated significant relationships of teachers’ possible selves development with their self-efficacy and students’ achievement. To investigate which components of possible selves might have more predictive power in predicting teacher’s self-efficacy and students’ achievement, the researchers employed regression analysis. The four subscales of possible selves – ideal, ought-to, actual, and feared selves- were found to be good predictors of teacher self-efficacy and only three subscales of possible selves including ideal, ought-to, and actual selves were strongly correlated with students’ achievement. The researchers concluded by suggesting that a sense of self-efficacy as well as a concern for students’ achievement as two main senses of selves should be incorporated into the possible selves of EFL teachers through implementing specific pre-service as well as in-service teacher education programs.