Investigating the Role of Self-Efficacy in Manipulating Instructional Textbooks: A Matter of Iranian Language Teachers

Mahyar Ganjabi,Manoochehr Jafarigohar,Hassan Soleimani,Hassan Iravani

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.2n.6p.76

Abstract

Guided by the research on the self-efficacy beliefs on the one hand and the works done on instructional materials evaluation and selection on the other, this study followed a two-fold purpose: first, examining teachers’ reactions towards prescribed textbooks and second, investigating relationships between such reactions and teachers’ sense of self-efficacy. Accordingly, 312 Iranian in-service high school English language teachers (N=312) were asked to respond to two scales: Self-Efficacy to Influence Instructional Textbooks (SEIIT) scale devised by the researchers according to the principles of Social Cognitive Theory and the 12-item Teacher’s Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) developed by Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy (2001). The data analysis revealed acceptable psychometric properties of the newly developed scale and a degree of correlation between self-efficacy in teaching and in dealing with prescribed textbooks. The findings also provided a number of practical and theoretical implications.

Highlights

The English language, as a contemporary lingua franca, is becoming so favorable across the world that providing learners with suitable textbooks has turned the respective publication market into a multi-million dollar industry (Sheldon, 1988)
The pattern of responses to the items in this scale showed that Iranian high school English language teachers displayed a moderate level of teaching self-efficacy ( = 7.52, SD = 1.56)
Further analysis of response patterns indicated that the ability to: “Assist parents to help their children learn English” received the lowest rating from the high school English language teachers ( = 5.71, SD = 2.24)

Summary

Introduction

The English language, as a contemporary lingua franca, is becoming so favorable across the world that providing learners with suitable textbooks has turned the respective publication market into a multi-million dollar industry (Sheldon, 1988). In a situation where we are witnessing the upsurge of efforts to publish the most suitable book ever written, teachers as those who in addition to students have another constant in their lives named textbooks are experiencing two circumstances. There are those teachers free to choose whatever textbooks seem to be appropriate to their teaching context and to their students’ linguistic needs. There are a group of teachers deprived of such an opportunity who are, instead, required to teach from the textbooks prescribed by their educational authorities (Byrd, 2001; Razmjoo, 2007). The latter group seems to be servant and not master of such instructional textbooks (Cunningsworth, 1984; Garinger, 2002)

Methods

Results

Conclusion