EFL Teachers’ Attitudes towards Being Supervised in an EFL Context

Abstract

This study was an attempt to explore Iranian EFL teachers’ attitude towards supervision and its influence on their classroom decision making. The study also examined the relationship between teachers’ teaching experience and their attitude towards classroom supervision. 74 male and female English teachers holding BA, MA, or PhD degrees participated in this survey. Classroom observation and a teachers’ questionnaire were used for the purpose of the study. The findings reveal that among the less experienced teachers those who had less than five years of teaching experience were found to be more influenced by the supervision process when it came to making decisions in the classroom. These teachers indicated the importance of supervision for their classroom improvement and their teaching skills and appeared to hold positive attitudes towards supervision program they were experiencing. Teachers with six to ten years of teaching experience appeared to be the most pessimists amongst others. In addition, from the results of the qualitative analysis it can be concluded that the supervision program obviously failed to function for those teachers who had 16 years of teaching experience and more as well. In this case, the program seemed to be only a paperwork job.