Comparative Analysis of Novice, Moderately Experienced, and Highly Experienced Iranian EFL Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Focusing on Their Cognition, Metacognition, Affection, and Behavior

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 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.

Keywords

• self-efficacy
• teaching experience
• comparative study
• teacher cognition