Investigating the Relationship Between Iranian EFL Teachers’ Autonomy and Creativity: Does Gender Make a Difference?

The present study was an attempt to investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ autonomy and creativity. It also explored whether there was any significant difference between male and female Iranian EFL teachers’ autonomy, and if there was a significant difference between male and female Iranian EFL teachers’ creativity. To this end, a total number of 80 EFL teachers (40 males and 40 females) from different institutes in Shiraz through a convenience sampling procedure were selected. All the participants were native Persian speakers between the age of 25 to 40, but with different years of teaching experience. In order to evaluate teachers’ autonomy, Teaching Autonomy Scale (TAS; Pearson & Hall, 1993) was used in this study. The questionnaire had 18 items on a 4-point Likert-scale, ranging from 1 (definitely false) to 4 (definitely true), and Cronbach’s alpha of α= .8 for TAS was reported in Pearson and Moomaw’s study (2005), and Cronbach’s alpha for TAS in this study turned out to be α= .8 too. To measure the participants’ creativity level, the Creativity Fostering Teacher Index (CFTI) developed by Soh (2000) was administered. This instrument had 45 items on a 6-point Likert scale. The reliability of the questionnaire was reported α= .82 in Soh’s Study (2000). Cronbach’s alpha for (CFTI) in this study was α= .90. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS Statistical Package (Version 26) in order to answer the research questions. Descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation were calculated. Pearson product-moment correlation was used to investigate the relationship between teacher’s autonomy and teachers’ creativity. Moreover, group statistics and the Independent Samples t- test conducted to find out whether there was any significant difference between male and female Iranian EFL teachers’ autonomy and creativity. The results of the study indicated that there was a significant statistical relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ autonomy and creativity. It also revealed that there was not a significant difference between male and female Iranian EFL teachers with respect to their autonomy. Neither was there a significant difference between male and female Iranian EFL teachers with respect to their creativity