Professionalism: The Perceptions of Iranian English Teachers of Competence and Performance in Language Teaching

Professionalism is a very important aspect of L2 teachers’ development in the recent years. Despite the studies which have focused on the concept of teachers professionalism, limited research has attempted to investigate the teachers attitudes and views about their own professionalism and its essential components. Accordingly, this study intended to investigate how Iranian English teachers would perceive professionalism defined in terms of such components as competence and performance. The participants comprised of 150 English teachers teaching at junior and senior high schools, language institutes, and universities. They were studied given such variables as age, degrees, experience, and context of teaching. The data was obtained through a questionnaire initially consisting of 44 items. Through factor analysis, inappropriate items were deleted, leaving only 15 items. Componential factor analysis indicated that almost all the participants, regardless of the aforementioned factors, unanimously agreed to the components of professionalism, namely, competence and performance. Besides, multiple regression analysis indicated none of the variables as the best predictor of teacher professionalism in Iran. Nevertheless, only age factor, highly correlated with experience, showed statistically minimal significance. The findings of this study can have some pedagogical implications for foreign and second language teaching. For example having knowledge competence and classroom performance skills to convey that competence should be the purpose of teacher education programs.