New Approaches to Teacher Effectiveness

Abstract

Teacher effectiveness has been a focal point in plentiful interdisciplinary research conducted by educational psychologists, policy makers and social scientists. The literature abounds in proposed models for measuring and assessing teacher effectiveness in the light of the ever-changing and technology-dominated educational reality. This paper suggests three possible approaches that surpass the academic and pedagogical aims of the established practice. The authors of the current paper see emotional intelligence, the attribution theory of motivation and emotion along with the broaden-and-build theory, as the stepping-stone to increasing teacher effectiveness in language classrooms in the modern world. It is our claim that our attributional beliefs, underpinned by a certain degree of positivity and emotional skills, may lead to the sought after university teacher development and effectiveness more profoundly. It is believed that the proposed approaches will meet the pedagogical outcomes of the syllabi in practice by fostering the theoretical and practical knowledge and expertise needed by educators teaching the 21st century skills to language students.