Investigating the essential mediating roles of gender and teaching experience on the relationships among Iranian EFL teachers ' well- being, self-concept and professional development

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of English Language Teaching, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

Abstract

Improvement and change in teachers' knowledge and practice are likely to bring about changes in teacher growth, varieties in teachers' instructional techniques and strategies as well as enhancement in student learning. In the field of language learning and teaching, many linguistic and non-linguistic issues have been examined to explain the role of psychological issues and individual differences in foreign language learning, However, the role of positive emotions has not been investigated sufficiently among EFL teachers. Therefore, the present study has investigated gender and teaching experience on the well-being, professional growth and self-concept of Iranian English teachers. The present research in terms of practical purpose and in terms of the method of collecting information, is a survey type, and in terms of execution time, it is cross-sectional, and in terms of execution logic, it is deductive-inductive. The current research community consists of 220 Iranian English language teachers in private language learning institutions in Tabriz who have at least 5 years of teaching experience. In the current research, the main measurement tool is a questionnaire, which is one of the common research tools and a direct method for obtaining research data. According to the nature of the subject, the research method is a quantitative method. The gathered data was analyzed using correlation analysis and structural equation modelling (SEM). The software packages SPSS 24.0 and Amos 8 were used for descriptive statistics and correlation analyses, respectively. The results revealed that there is a significant structural relationship between well-being and self-concept with the mediation of gender and experience. However, there is no significant structural relationship between well-being and professional development with the mediation of gender and experience.

Keywords

[1] H.S. Afshar and S. Ghasemi, Developing and validating a model for exploring Iranian EFL teachers perception of professional development, J. Teach. Language Skills 37 (2018), no. 3, 169–210.
[2] P. Benevene, S. De Stasio, and C. Fiorilli, Editorial: Well-being of school teachers in their work environment, Front. Psycho. 11 (2020), no. 3, 1–4.
[3] K.A. Bollen, Structural Equations with Latent Variables, John Wiley & Sons, 1989.
[4] J. Bown and C. White, A social and cognitive approach to affect in SLA, IRAL-Int. Rev. Appl. Ling. Language Teach. 48 (2010), no. 4, 331–353.
[5] J. Butler and M. Kern, The PERMA-Profiler: A brief multidimensional measure of flourishing, Int. J. Wellbe. 3 (2016), no. 6, 1–48.
[6] H.D. Brown, Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, 5th ed., Pearson Education Inc, 2007.
[7] L.M. Desimone, Improving impact studies of teachers’ professional development: Toward better conceptualizations and measures, Educ. Res. 38 (2009), no. 3, 181–199.
[8] J.M. Dewaele and P.D. MacIntyre, The two faces of Janus? Anxiety and enjoyment in the foreign language classroom, Stud. Second Language Learn. Teach. 4 (2014), no. 2, 237–274.
[9] Z. Dornyei and S. Ryan, The Psychology of the Language Learner Revisited: Second Language Acquisition Research Series, Routledge, 2015.
[10] J. Fathi and A. Derakhshan, Teacher self-efficacy and emotional regulation as predictors of teaching stress: An investigation of Iranian English language teachers, Teach. English Language 13 (2019), no. 2, 117–143.
[11] J. Fathi, A. Derakhshan, and A. Saharkhiz Arabani, Investigating a structural model of self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and psychological well-being among Iranian EFL teachers, Iran. J. Appl. Language Stud. 12 (2020), no. 1, 123–150.
[12] S. Fruhwirth-Schnatter, Fully Bayesian analysis of switching Gaussian state space models, Ann. Inst. Statist. Math. 53 (2001), 31–49.
[13] F.A. Huppert and T.T.C. So, Flourishing across Europe: Application of a new conceptual framework for defining well-being, Soc. Indicat. Res. 110 (2013), no. 3, 837–861.
[14] Y. Lan and M.R. Saad, The level of well-being in Chinese university EFL students, Int. J. Educ. Psycho. Counsel. 5 (2020), no. 36, 1–11.
[15] S.Y. Lee and X.Y. Song, Model comparison of nonlinear structural equation models with fixed covariates, Psychometrika 68 (2003), 27-–47.
[16] S. Lyubomirsky, L.A. King, and E. Diener, The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success?, Psycho. Bull. 131 (2005), no. 6, 803–855.
[17] D.M. McInerney, H. Korpershoek, H. Wang, and A.J. Morin, Teachers’ occupational attributes and their psychological wellbeing, job satisfaction, occupational self-concept and quitting intentions, Teach. Teacher Educ.71 (2018), 145–158.
[18] L. Roeder and L. Wasserman, Practical Bayesian density estimation using mixtures of normals, J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 22 (1997), no. 439, 894–902.
[19] R.D. Rusk and L. Waters, A psycho-social system approach to well-being: Empirically deriving the five domains of positive functioning, J. Positive Psycho. 10 (2015), no. 2, 141–152.
[20] M.E.P. Seligman and M. Csikszentmihalyi, Positive psychology: An introduction, In M. Csikszentmihalyi (Ed.), Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Springer, 2014, pp. 279–298.
[21] P.T.P. Wong, Positive psychology 2.0: Towards a balanced interactive model of the good life, Canad. Psycho. 52 (2011), no. 2, 69–81.
Volume 16, Issue 1
January 2025
Pages 221-234
  • Receive Date: 02 July 2023
  • Revise Date: 26 October 2023
  • Accept Date: 28 October 2023