Choice Theory-Based Instruction and Clinical Supervision for EFL Teachers: The Impact on Learners’ Reading Comprehension and Autonomy

Abstract

This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of choice theory-based instruction and clinical supervision for EFL teachers on their students’ autonomy and reading comprehension. To this end, a sample of 30 Iranian EFL teachers, selected based on their willingness to participate, were divided into two groups of 15: one group participated in a choice theory-based instruction program while the other underwent a clinical supervision program. In addition to the teachers, a sample of 445 intermediate EFL learners taught by the teachers participated in the study – 225 learners were taught by the teachers who underwent the choice theory-based instruction while the other 220 learners sat in the classes of the teachers undergoing clinical supervision. The Learner Autonomy Questionnaire (LAQ) was used both as a pretest and posttest to measure the autonomy of the 445 learners before and after they were taught by the 30 teachers. In addition, a sample Preliminary English Test reading paper was administered to the learners prior to their classes (i.e., a general English class instructed through a commonplace task-based procedure) as a pretest and they also took another sample reading test as the posttest. The inferential statistics run in this study comprised two ANCOVAs with the results revealing that the learners being taught by the teachers who underwent the choice theory-based instruction outperformed the learners taught by those teachers who participated in the clinical supervision program in terms of both their autonomy and reading comprehension. The pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed in this paper

Keywords

• choice theory
• clinical supervision
• learner autonomy
• reading comprehension