Developing and Validating an EFL Teacher Professional Identity Inventory: A Mixed Methods Study

Abstract

In line with the exponential growth in English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher professional identity research, the present study was an attempt to develop and validate a questionnaire on EFL teacher professional identity. Following Pennington (2015), we defined EFL teacher professional identity as 'a unique blend of individual teacher characteristics within the disciplinary knowledge, standards, and practices of the field' (p. 78), which is further comprised of a set of core and peripheral elements (Beijaard et al., 2004). In order to operationalize this construct, a sequential mixed methods design was utilized. Hence, a total number of 24 participants and 750 EFL teachers took part in the qualitative and quantitative phases respectively. Analysis of the qualitative data revealed the features characterizing EFL teacher professional identity. On the basis of the qualitative results, the first version of the inventory was developed through exploratory factor analysis and was validated using structural equation modeling. In general, the results of the study paint a multi-dimensional picture of EFL teacher professional identity. This picture depicts the core features of EFL teacher professional identity and a number of peripheral elements which change and harmonize in response to the individual, contextual, and socio-cultural factors. (Beijaard et al., 2004).