IRANIAN EFL TEACHERSʹʹ REFLECTION ON CURRENT TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAMS

Although research on teacher education is no longer in its infancy, it has largely failed to affect the ways in which programs and teachers are evaluated. Consequently our purpose in this study is to reveal the (in)efficiency of the current themes of in-service teacher training programs in Iran. To this end, a sample of 61 English teachers in Tehran province were selected who were asked to fill in a modified questionnaire referring to educational programs held in the last 5 years. Degree of presence/absence of these issues in the programs was estimated; critical pedagogy enhancement, emphasis on teachers’ reflectivity, technology and digital collaboration tools implementation and promoting linguistic and classroom management skills. Results have shown that a relative degree of satisfaction of the programs is observed regarding inclusion of technological advancements and efforts to promote teachers’ General English Proficiency (GEP) and classroom management skills; however teachers showed a significant degree of dissatisfaction regarding relevant attempts to enhance criticality of pedagogical issues and practicality of reflective teaching. Moreover, patterns appeared after analysis of semi-structured interviews have revealed that needs analysis is in direct relation with strength of the programs while a theoretical (not practical) orientation of the program objectives in general is considered as the major weakness.