teaching experience

As a dynamic and multifaceted entity, motivation is prone to constant change under the influence of a great many factors including context, task, group dynamics and learner characteristics. Informed by the dearth of research on motivational fluctuations among the teacher community, the researchers in the current study strove to investigate the factors giving rise to Iranian EFL teachers’ motivational oscillations during the practice of online teaching. Thus, opting for a mixed methods research design, the researchers explored the role of emotional intelligence (EI) and seniority (teaching experience) in determining teachers’ motivational status and intensity in the quantitative phase. However, in the qualitative phase the researchers tapped into the teachers’ perceptions concerning the overriding factors bringing about their motivational fluctuations. A total of 55 teachers with varying degrees of teaching experience ranging from one year to 28 years participated in the study. To gather data for the quantitative phase, Bar-On’s (1997) emotional quotient inventory (EQ-i), and Motometer were utilized. However, in the qualitative phase, the data from teacher narratives and interview responses were consulted. The quantitative results via applying Mann Whitney U test revealed that though emotional intelligence and seniority both played a role in teachers’ motivational level, their influences were not statistically significant. Also, as regards the results of data analysis for the qualitative phase, several factors were pinpointed to underlie the teachers’ motivational changes during online teaching experience, including teaching materials, time intervals during the session, instructional topics, learner factors and internet connection problems. The findings are thought to have fruitful implications for EFL teachers, particularly in sensitizing them toward the role of different factors in their motivational changes.

The current study attempted to cast light on the status quo of Iranian EFL teachers' perceptions of ICC. It further attempted to see if their experience would influence their conceptualizations of ICC. To this end, a total of 100 EFL teachers were asked to complete a questionnaire survey adapted from Han & Song's (2011) study. The results of both quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed a number of commonalities and discrepancies among the participants' conceptualizations of International Communication Competence (ICC) and its relevance to ELT considering their teaching experience. The findings point to the prominence of intercultural teacher education in the Iranian context.

This study, drawing on a dual theoretical standpoint constituting ecological systems theory (EST) and self-determination theory (SDT), compared Iranian novice and experienced EFL teachers’ remotivational strategies. The participants, selected based on convenience sampling technique, comprised two equal 32-member groups of novice and experienced EFL teachers teaching different proficiency levels at six language institutes. To gather data, semi-structured interviews were conducted. The results of thematic data analysis indicated that novice and experienced teachers were approximately similar in terms of the emerging theme instances situated within the integrative SDT/EST framework. Nonetheless, novice and experienced teachers were markedly different concerning the number of theme instances for each SDT facet positioned in the EST layers. Moreover, the results of Chi-square test demonstrated significant differences between novice and experienced teachers in terms of the number of themes existing in the SDT/EST frame. The results, enhancing teacher educators’ understanding of the similarities and disparities between novice and experienced teachers’ perceptions of remotivational strategies, can provide teachers and teacher educators with awareness concerning how remotivational strategies are nested across multiple systems while simultaneously being informed by a certain motivation-specific theory.

  Objective : The increasing demands of the teaching profession, especially in private schools, have made work-related stress a major contributor to the decline of mental well-being among teachers. Understanding the relationship between work stress and mental well-being is crucial in order to help teachers deal with this overwhelming problem. This study examined work stress as a correlate of mental well-being among private secondary school teachers, and to assess whether gender, marital status, and teaching experience moderate this relationship. Methods : A descriptive correlational research design was adopted for this study. The target population of the study was 1,253 private school teachers and a sample of size of 424 private school teachers was utilised using stratified random sampling method. The instruments utilised for data collection are the School Teachers Job Stressor Scale (STJSS) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Pearson correlation and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to analyze the data. Results: The results showed a significant negative correlation between work stress and mental well-being (r = -0.767, p < 0.001). Gender significantly moderated the relationship (β = .187, p < 0.001), with male teachers showing greater susceptibility. Marital status (β = -0.191, p < 0.001) and teaching experience (β = .187, p < 0.001) also significantly moderated the relationship, indicating that married and less experienced teachers were more negatively affected by work stress. Conclusion : The study concludes that high work stress significantly diminishes the mental well-being of private school teachers, with the magnitude of this impact varying significantly across demographic variables such as gender, marital status, and years of teaching experience.

Teachers’ cognition, as an important entity in determining the level of efficient teaching, has been the target of recent studies. Metacognitive awareness is also claimed to be the manifestation of the underlining cognition. Therefore, this study took a new move in the area of teacher cognition research. It integrated teaching experience, one of the main factors of cognitive/metacognitive building blocks, in language noticing. It also managed to perceive the relation between teachers’ cognition and metacognitive awareness, taking experience into account.  For this, at first, Noticing Concept Inventory (NCI) was given to 60 experienced and novice teachers, then the same teachers took teacher metacognitive awareness Inventory (MALT). The independent sample t-test confirmed the role of teaching experience in conceptualizing noticing; in the next statistical step, Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Multiple Regression Analysis detected the relation between teachers’ cognitive status and metacognitive awareness. Experienced teachers were found to be more metacognitively aware hence holding up higher level of noticing cognition. In the final step, the ANOVA pertained the procedural knowledge, as a metacognitive component, actively involved in the teachers’ noticing cognition. Findings illustrated the key role of teaching experience in forming and modifying teachers’ cognition on noticing.