Factors influencing teachers’ professional learning: A study of Turkish EFL teachers

Abstract

The primary aim of this study is to investigate the factors influencing teachers’ professional learning the most among four factors; (a) teacher cognition and beliefs, (b) teacher emotions, (c) teacher motivation, and (d) contextual variables and find out whether or not there is a difference among teaching experience and degree in terms of teacher learning. The research sample consisted of 1015 teachers of English from different cities, teaching levels, and various ages in Turkey. In order to find out what factors influence English Teachers’ professional learning the most, English Language Teacher Learning Scale (ELTLS) was used. According to the results, teacher cognition and beliefs factor influenced teacher learning the most and contextual variables were the second influencing factor. When the differences were examined it was found out that there was a significant difference only between teacher cognition and beliefs, and teacher experience. The post-hoc test revealed that there was a significant difference between 21 and above year-experienced teachers and 0-5 year-experienced in teacher cognition and beliefs factor.