Investigating the Relationship between Iranian EFL Teachers' Conformity to Postmethod Principles and Their Academic Success

Abstract

In educational world, the language teaching pendulum is swinging away from methods to postmethod pedagogy although its actual emergence in some contexts is under doubt. The present study aims at pursuing whether Iranian English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) teachers conform their teaching approach to postmethod principles and whether there exists a relationship between teachers' willingness and conformity to post-method pedagogy and their academic success perceived by their students. To this end, an exploratory study was undertaken with a sample size of 102 EFL teachers from a number of private institutes in Iran. The Postmethod |Pedagogy Questionnaire (PPQ) was employed to evaluate the teachers' level of willingness and conformity to the principles of postmethod pedagogy. In addition, the measures of the teachers' professional success were obtained via Characteristics of Successful Iranian EFL Teacher Questionnaire (CSIETQ) which was filled out by the participant-teachers' students. The analysis of one-sample T-test indicated that Iranian EFL teachers do not show significantly high level of willingness and conformity to the principles of postmethod pedagogy. In this regard, educational level does not play any significant influence on the teachers' conformity to postmethod principles, determined by the results of one sample T-test having been run on BA and MA teachers' postmethod conformity. The results of Pearson correlation coefficient demonstrated that there is a significant and positive relationship between conformity to postmethod pedagogy principles and professional success. The results offer implications and suggestions for pedagogical consideration within Iranian EFL context.