An Investigation of Iranian EFL Teachers’ Reflective Self-evaluation for Understanding their Teaching Practices.

The purpose of this study was to investigate Iranian English language teachers’ use of their reflective self-evaluation in the language classroom in order to increase their professional success and to deal with their professional environment problems and challenges. Sixty EFL teachers (17 male and 43 female) from different branches of Goldis Language Institute in Tabriz, who taught at the intermediate level, were randomly selected. The age range of the participant teachers was 25 to 52. Twenty-two of the teachers held BA, 34 of them MA, and four of them Ph.D. degree with the teaching experience ranging from 2 to 17 years. The study took a descriptive survey design and the main instrument for data collection was The English Language Teaching reflection Inventory (ELTRI) developed by Akbari, Behzadpour, and Dadvand (2010). The participants’ answers to each item of the questionnaire were carefully analyzed statistically and explained in terms of frequencies and percentages. The results indicated that the Iranian English teachers who participated in the current study were to some extent engaged in reflective teaching and it seems that they were aware of the benefits and crucial role of this aspect of professional development. Comparatively, English teachers mostly preferred to reflect in the meta-cognitive and learner components. From the participants’ comments regarding the importance of the items in ELTRI, it was found that the participantsthink about their own strengths and weaknesses and tend to talk to their students to learn about their family background hobbies, interest, and abilities.