چکیده:
This study was aimed at recognizing constraints on the way of some Iranian language
teachers' utilization of self-developed, localized, English language teaching resources. To this
aim, three sets of teacher variables on pedagogical and personal accounts were examined
including Language teachers' experience (novice/experienced), their educational level
(BA/MA/PhD) and their gender. Data were collected in two phases. In the first phase, through
stratified sampling, some eighty-three volunteering, English language teachers (Male and
Female), who were indulged in the Iranian Ministry of Education (MoE), university settings
(public and private) and language institutes were randomly selected. Teachers’ responses to a
validated researcher-made questionnaire on language teacher curriculum autonomy revealed
an overall significant Multiple R with F (3, 80) =.88, (0.04) but each individual above-cited
predictors could not significantly predict teacher curriculum autonomy score. In the second
phase for triangulation aims, three above-cited teacher variables were mapped over the
insights gained through written interview sessions with some fourteen English language
teachers. Language teachers' self-reported 'challenges' and 'opportunities' for using selfdeveloped
language teaching resources for class use were content analyzed. It became evident
that teaching experience was mystified in some respects in terms of its influence over
interviewed teachers since diverse intentions on the part of the language teachers in this
research might have deterred them not to use their full potential over using their own
materials in class. Possible reasons for this situation have been fully discussed in the end.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Primarily, the concept of autonomy has long been mostly utilized and reported for language learners' success/failure since its introduction into ELT educational contexts (Balcikanli, 2008; Benson, 2006; Fei, 2002; Gremmo and Riley 1995; Najeeb, 2013; Tilfarlioglu & Ciftci, 2011 etc).
In educational settings, autonomy support involves a teacher taking students' perspective; acknowledging their feelings and perceptions; providing students with information and opportunities for choice; minimizing the use of control, criticism, demands, and pressure; and praising mastery (Assor, Kaplan, Kanat-Maymon & Roth, 2005; Black & Deci, 2000; Reeve, Jang, Hardre, & Omura, 2002; Reeve, 2009).
To what extent could collective influences by language teachers' personal (gender) and pedagogical (teaching experience and educational level) variables predict a higher autonomy score for materials development aims?
4. Data Analysis Procedure</H2> In line with the research questions proposed for the first quantitative phase of the study, as to exploring the predictive power of the three independent variables including language teachers' educational level, teaching experience and their gender, regressional designs with ANOVA output tables were used.
In this statistical method, we were concerned with a set of nominal (gender and educational level) and ordinal quantitative variables (teaching experience) as predictors and language teachers' autonomy scores as the continuous criterion variable, which could be run in multiple regression analyses (Tabachnik &amp; Fidell, 2001).
For the second research question in this study, interview sessions were arranged with another group of English language teachers similarly having diverse teaching experiences, educational levels and were from among both gender and data were examined through content analysis of the recruited language teachers' insights.