professional development

The present study was aimed at providing a smart model of professional development of second high school principals in Tehran province. This study was based on  a combined strategy of successive explorations. The research method was qualitative case study and in the form of content analysis. The selection of the sample in the qualitative section was made by a targeted sampling method with a criterion-based technique. The sample size was up to 20 people emerging in order. The data collection tool consisted of two sections, semi-structural interviews in the field and a review of upstream documents and training documents in the library section, and data analysis in the qualitative section based on the content analysis using  ATLASTI software. The quality of this study was observed, from the point of view of experts , and  6 dimensions and 29 components were considered in the professional development of second high school principals. The identified dimensions are educational, research, service, ethical, cultural, and executive. This is not  only an evaluation of the candidates for the second-high school administrative candidates in the field, but also the role of a way to promote the material and the competence of these scholars. Due to the limited resources of some organizations, it is not possible to set up an office or deputy for the subject of digital transformation.

This sociocultural theory-based study investigates how professional development activities mediated novice EFL teachers in their teaching careers. Four volunteer novice teachers in their two-year probation time participated in the study. Each novice teacher wrote a narrative every month in a semester and was interviewed at the beginning and end of that semester. Data from all the narratives and interviews disclose that the institutional context with much teaching workload, mandatory research, and involvement in administration-related work provide the affordances for the novice teachers to internalize their understanding of the duties of English lecturers and drive to practice those duties. Besides, the professional development activities in teaching, researching and others are reported to lead to growth in the understanding, experience as well as confidence level of novice teachers. From the findings, implications are put forward to how to provide support to mediate the professional growth of early-career teachers.

Recruiting efficient EFL teacher educators (TEs) is crucial for language institutes as it can directly affect the quality of language instruction and, consequently the success of language institutes. Nevertheless, language institute policies for employing TEs and strategies for their professional development have not been well-documented. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted in this qualitative study to investigate 30 language institute managers’ recruitment policies and professional development strategies for employing non-native English TEs in the Iranian EFL context. The participants’ answers to interview questions were transcribed and analyzed based on the three levels of the open, axial, and selective coding process. The results revealed that job experience, academic/educational competencies, and digital literacy are the most important features implicating the recruitment of TEs. As for professional development strategies for TEs, the main ones included holding regular meetings for TEs, asking TEs to take part in professionally relevant seminars, workshops, and webinars, and encouraging them to make peer observations of teacher education courses. These findings have implications for language TEs' recruitment and their professional development.

The purpose of the research was to investigate the role of visionary leadership and empowering leadership of school principals On Teacher's Change Tendencies by mediating role of teachers’ organizational learning and professional development. The research population was all the primary school teachers of Kurdistan province. Of those, 364 teachers were selected by proportional stratified random sampling based on the Cochran's Formula. The research method was a quantitative correlational study based on the covariance based structural equation modeling approach. To collect data, the empowering leadership questionnaire (Ahearn, Mathieu and Rapp, 2005); visionary leadership questionnaire (Kanger and Kanango, 1998); Organizational learning questionnaire (Garcia Morales et al., 2006); professional development questionnaire (Nova's, 2008) and tendency to change questionnaire (Dunham et al, 1989) were used. The reliability and validity of the questionnaires were evaluated by the Cronbach's alpha coefficients and confirmatory factor analysis. To analyze the data, structural equation modeling was used by Lisrel software. The results showed that: visionary and empowering leadership of school principals had a direct, positive and meaningful effect on teachers' organizational learning, teachers' professional development and teachers' change tendencies. They had also a positive and significant indirect effect on teachers' change tendencies through organizational learning and professional development. The variables of visionary and empowering leadership of school principals, teachers' organizational learning, and teachers' professional development were able to explain 0.13 of the variance of teachers' change tendencies.

High school teachers play an important role due to the specific age range of students. The present study was conducted to determine the effect of professional development and job values on job performance of Babol high school teachers. This study is applied in terms of objective. In this study, quantitative approach, survey strategy, descriptive method, correlation, multiple linear regression and path analysis were used. The statistical population of the research consists of 1438 Babol high school teachers who were working in the academic year of 2022-2023. Using Cochran's formula, 364 teachers were selected as a sample by simple random method. The data collection tools are three questionnaires of professional development, job values and job performance. The data was analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression by SPSS 25 and path analysis model by AMOS 22. The results showed that professional development had a significant effect on job performance both directly and indirectly through job values as a mediating variable and can predict it. It is suggested that the education officials use scientific and practical methods to provide the conditions for the professional development of teachers in order to promote their job values and improve their job performance

Highlighting the inseparable link between language, culture, and technology in English as a foreign language education, this qualitative exploratory study examined the impact of cultural and multicultural awareness on Iranian EFL teachers’ professional development within augmented virtual reality (AVR)-based and conventional teacher education programs. Thus, 28 EFL teachers participated in semi-structured interviews and reflective inquiries following eight-week training courses. Data analysis was done manually via qualitative thematic analysis and by MAXQDA according to Guskey’s (2002) professional development model. Consequently, seven themes for the conventional group (maintaining a culturally responsive environment, enhanced teachers’ behavior, curriculum improvement, creative ideas, enhanced skills, efficient communication, and preparing students for effective communication) and five themes for the AVR group (experiencing authentic material and environment, accessibility features, less interactivity in the classroom, teachers’ passion and confidence improvement, and less cultural boundaries) were extracted. The study highlighted the crucial role of cultural and multicultural immersion and adaptive teaching strategies in creating culturally responsive environments. This approach equipped EFL instructors to address diverse student needs and foster inclusive learning spaces effectively. Moreover, the AVR technology deepened cultural immersion and supported modern teaching approaches, enhancing educators' ability to engage with diverse cultural classrooms. Despite the observed improvements in trainees’ passion and confidence, a need for reconsidering technological aspects in contemporary teacher education was identified. Ultimately, the findings offered pedagogical implications for EFL teacher education and teacher trainers to equip teachers with the necessary skills to address cultural and multicultural challenges in EFL teaching and stimulate their professional growth.

The present study investigated whether individual or collective reflective journals could lead to teachers’ professional development and professional identity (re)construction. To this end, 30 Iranian EFL teachers were selected through convenience sampling. The participants wrote pre-workshop reflective journals individually and collectively and attended a reflective consciousness-raising workshop for eight sessions. The participants were informed about the major tenets of reflection, professional development, and professional identity (re)construction in the workshop. Afterward, they wrote post-workshop reflective journals again individually and collectively. The participants sat follow-up interviews for the researchers to find out which kinds of journals better helped them develop professionally and (re)construct their professional identity. The findings showed that individual reflective journals and collective reflective journals contributed to teachers’ professional development and professional identity (re)construction respectively. The findings might imply that stakeholders involved that is EFL education policymakers, curriculum developers, and syllabus designers hold interactive workshops for pre-service and in-service teachers on reflective journal writing which might lead to both EFL teachers’ professional development and identity (re)construction. Moreover, it is recommended that the decision-makers and senior managers develop systematic checklists addressing those influential factors found in the present study to contribute to teachers’ professional development and professional identity construction.

English proficiency as the content knowledge for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers determines their instructional quality. However, previous studies have not focused on the significance of this knowledge in support of Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) on technology adoption in teaching. Therefore, this study aims at finding out the correlation between TPACK and technology applications, and how technology applications link to teachers’ English proficiency levels. The study adopted a quantitative method, and the data were collected using two questionnaires in Likert scale, one for TPACK and another for technology application. Teachers’ English proficiency levels are determined using the content knowledge dimension of TPACK. The questionnaires were completed online by 74 English pre-service teacher graduates who had participated in a national teacher certification program involving real teaching practice. The data were analyzed using the Spearman correlation coefficient to determine the correlation between TPACK dimensions and technology adoption and ordinal logistic regression analysis to find out the effect of teachers’ English proficiency levels on technology applications. The results show that most TPACK dimensions correlate to technology applications with the level of correlations between 0.26 (weak) and 0.47 (moderate). English proficiency has been found to affect technology applications only among teachers who regularly used technology in teaching. Teachers with high English proficiency used technology in teaching 3.06 times more frequently than those whose English proficiency was low. Therefore, it is recommended that English proficiency development be inscluded in teacher professional development to ensure that teachers use technology in teaching