Abstract:
Teacher autonomy is viewed very differently: one teacher
may view autonomy as a means to gain substantial freedom
from interference or supervision; another may view it as the
freedom to develop collegial relationships and accomplish
tasks that extend beyond the classroom; and even some
others may perceive it as a means for principals to avoid their
duties (Frase and Sorenson, 1992). Although the concept was
viewed as a unitary one in the past, it is recently decomposed
into six distinct subcomponents: autonomy over curriculum,
pedagogy, assessment, professional development, student
discipline, and classroom environment (LaCoe, 2008). These
six subcomponents of teacher autonomy provide a solid
framework to understand the complex nature of teacher
autonomy in the study. However, the study aimed at
examining Iranian (N=71) and Turkish (N=48) high school
EFL teachers’ opinions about teacher autonomy in
curriculum development. The results revealed that there were
slight differences between Iranian and Turkish teachers’
autonomy perceptions. They also indicated there were
significant differences among teachers in considering their
gender, age and academic level, while no significant
relationship was found for their marital status.
Machine summary:
Finally, perceptions of autonomy have been found to be related to various factors such as tension, frustration, anxiety, and job stress among teachers (Pearson and Hall, 1993; Natale, 1993; Davis and Wilson, 2000; Dinham and Scott, 2000; Webb, 2002; Pearson and Moomaw, 2006; Bustingorry, 2008).
e. pedagogy andcurriculum evaluation, decision making, and problem solving) do Iranian and Turkish high school EFL teachers' autonomy perceptions differ?
An 11-item questionnaire was used to measure teacher autonomy perceptions of the participants in the subscales of Pedagogy and Curriculum Evaluation(4 items), Decision Making (4 items), and Problem Solving (3 items), each of which uses a six-point Likert scale ranging from 'disagree very much' (1) to 'agree very much' (6).
{مراجعه شود به فایل جدول الحاقی} The examination of the Mean Rank (Mrk) andMedian (Mdn) scores of the subscales of teacher autonomy also revealed that high scores were received by Turkish teachers in the three subcomponents of Pedagogy and Curriculum Evaluation (Iranian ..
063 DISCUSSION The findings regarding the degree of difference between Iranian and Turkish teachers' autonomy perceptions in reference to the three dimensions of Pedagogy and Curriculum Evaluation, Decision Making, and Problem Solving revealed a high mean rank and median for Turkish teachers (Iranian ..
Furthermore, the results regarding the marital status showed no significant relationship between the single, married, and divorced groups in the three subscales of Pedagogy and Curriculum Evaluation, Decision Making, and Problem Solving, which meant that this variable did not play a role in teacher autonomy processes here.