Coping Strategies Employed by EFL Teachers to Avoid Classroom Management Constraints: Scale Development and Validation

Classroom management constraints and how English teachers cope with or remove them effectively have significantly impacted EFL teachers and teacher educators. However, the coping strategies employed by teachers with high and low levels of expertise have not been thoroughly explored yet. To this end, 22 teachers in one language learning institute in Tehran were interviewed, and the main coping strategies used by the teachers were extracted through qualitative analysis of the interviews. Then, the extracted strategies were worded into items carefully. The questionnaire of EFL teachers’ coping strategies was validated for the purpose of the study. After running exploratory factor analysis, the findings revealed that the participants used twenty-three coping strategies under two sub-constructs: problem-focused and emotionfocused strategies. One hundred EFL teachers with high and low levels of expertise (fifty in the high and fifty in the low group) responded to the coping strategy questionnaire. The results revealed that highly expert teachers used the extracted coping strategies more frequently. Furthermore, the researcher confirmed that teachers need in-service training courses on coping strategies to manage their classes efficiently. The results have implications for stakeholders, namely English language teachers, teacher educators, language institutes, education departments, and EFL curriculum developers.