Iranian EFL Teachers' Professional Identity and Their Goal Orientation

Abstract

Teachers' professional identity has been defined as a developing and dynamic characteristic of teachers affecting social and personal aspects. Regarding Teacher Professional Identity (TPI), both personal and the professional dimensions of being and empowering a teacher should be investigated. Achievement goal theory concerns that individuals do their best for learning, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals. This study investigated the relationship between Iranian EFL teachers' professional identity and their goal orientation. To this end, TPI and goal-orientation questionnaires were distributed via the google form links being shared among 380 male and female EFL teachers in Telegram and WhatsApp groups in which EFL teachers were the members, and 371 of them returned the questionnaires. To analyze the data, Pearson correlation and multiple regression were used and the results revealed that there was a positive and significant relationship between TPI and goal orientation (GO). To investigate the subscales' predictability power, personal teaching efficacy proved to have the highest predicting power for TPI. The findings may be fruitful for EFL teachers who may not be aware of different dimensions of their PI and how they can control the influencing factors and develop PI in different domains by exploring their orientations.

Keywords

• professional identity
• goal orientation
• personal teaching efficacy
• iranian efl teachers