Teachers Awareness of Pedagogical Competence and Students Learning Achievement Based on a Psychometric Measure Development of English Language Teachers’ Pedagogical Competence (ELTPC)

The study examined the impact of high school English langugae teachers’ awareness of pedagogical competence on student learning. A psychometric instrument of ELTPC was first developed through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with 320 high school teachers in Guilan, Northern Iran. Based on the developed instrument, 36 English teachers were divided into two groups of aware and unaware teachers of pedagogical competences according to Contrasting Groups Method of cut score. Then, 160 high school third graders underwent the instruction of the aware and unaware teachers for 7 weeks. Finally, an interview regarding the teachers’ implementation of pedagogical competence in classrooms was conducted with 30 students. The findings from the experiment and interview supported the teachers in aware group. However, they were not reported as highly practicing the pedagogical competence that brought up the issue of mismatch between theory and practice. The findings can be practically used by schools, education administration, and teacher educators.