چکیده:
The study investigated EFL teachers’ current level of critical consciousness as well as their beliefs about the educational context where they taught. The study also explored how gender, teaching experience, workplace, and academic degree differentiated the participants with regard to their critical consciousness. Drawing upon the related literature and the existing questionnaires in the field, we designed and validated a questionnaire applying technical statistical procedures (e.g., confirmatory factor analysis). The questionnaire was then completed by 310 English teachers teaching in different language institutions across the country. The findings revealed that, in general, EFL teachers’ current level of critical consciousness was above average. However, they believed that the educational context did not encourage and cultivate in them critical consciousness. It was also found that, contrary to expectations, the academic degree did not differentiate teachers in this regard. Moreover, male and female teachers were found not to be significantly different in their critical consciousness. The theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed in the paper.
خلاصه ماشینی:
EFL Teachers’ Critical Consciousness: The Role of Gender, Age, Academic Degree, Teaching Experience and Workplace Hossein Movassagh, PhD Candidate, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran, Email: hussein_movassagh@yahoo.
1. Background and Theoretical Framework A cursory look at the literature on Applied Linguistics in general and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) in particular shows that the field has mainly focused on the cognitive and linguistic aspects of second language education in its relatively short history, neglecting, to a great extent, the social and political dimensions inherent in practicing it (Abednia, 2012, Crookes & Lehner, 1998).
The present study was thus designed to investigate the CC of Iranian EFL teachers and to see whether such individual factors as age, gender, academic degree, and teaching experience had any impact on their CC.
Next, to answer the fourth research question of the study, a MANOVA was run to investigate whether age, teaching experience, gender, academic degree, and workplace differentiated EFL teachers with regard to their CC.
This is a particularly thorny issue in the context of the present study especially at universities and schools as the students with differing levels of English language proficiency from different socio-economic status receive the same form of instruction imposed to the teachers by the authorities, which is totally in contrast to the tenets of critical pedagogy.
As the results revealed, considering the responses to the items of the questionnaire, the teachers’ current level of CC was rather high, although they mostly believed that the educational context of the present study did not facilitate the development of CC.