Background: Inadequacy of authority-based defensive teaching and summative and product-based evaluation such as certification and observation measures in providing information about the actual teaching teachers do was an inspiration in this study to design an inventory for formative and process-based evaluation of teacher competences. This study aimed at designing an inventory for formative and process-based evaluation of teacher competences. Methods: To this end, teacher competences were theoretically defined and the indicators of competence in practice were derived and operationalized through Competency Framework for Teachers proposed by department of education and training in Australia (2004) by a panel of five EFL (English as a foreign language) teaching experts through focused group discussion. The resulting inventory was 65 items on four teacher competences including critical, clinical, personal and technical competences from three perspectives of student, departmental, learning and growth measured on 5 point likert scale. Results: Testing the inventory with 216 Iranian EFL teachers indicated that there were high Cronbach's alpha reliability indices for the three main perspectives and their dimensions. This implies that the inventory enjoyed appropriate internal consistency. The results of exploratory factors analysis indicated that there was no construct irrelevant factor and all the indicators were loaded in the related teacher competence and perspective dimension. Four separate structural equation models (SEM) were tested in order to probe the trait structure of the inventory. The first three SEM models targeted the three perspectives individually, while the last model explored the structure of the total data. The results indicated that all items had significant contributions to their respective dimensions. Conclusions: The potential application of this inventory in teacher education programs and the factors that limit its applicability were discussed.
Abstract-Although CALL (computer assisted language learning) has long and distinguished history, it is still in its infancy on some aspects. Since writing is one of the inevitable parts of both academic and daily life, the researchers designed the present study to investigate the effect of technology namely English correcting websites in influencing the accuracy of the writing performance of 60 EFL intermediate students. To come up with an answer to the research questions, participants whose scores were one standard deviation above and below the mean in PET writing part 2 were selected. Then, they were assigned into experimental and control groups. The treatment which was motivating students to consult the English correcting websites as they were writing their writing assignments was given in the experimental group and in the control group; participants received the traditional teacher given feedback. The results showed statistically significant differences in students' performance suggesting experimental group outperformed the control group.The results have interesting implication for methodology, testing, and materials development.
In the present study aims at evaluating general English program at Tabriz University, Iran. To this end, three questionnaires were designed in Likert scales which included needs analysis, materials evaluation from students' point of view and teacher analysis in which students provide their ideas about the agreement between their perceived needs, provided materials, and the methodology practiced in their classes. The data gathered for the purpose of data analysis. The data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively in order to answer the research questions. Since the needs analysis was a complex task with various possibilities of the needs and contexts, questions tap different constructs. So In quantitative analysis, the descriptive statistics were used to calculate the frequency with which different choices of the questions in the questionnaires occur. To make more comprehensive picture, the data were analyzed qualitatively too. In qualitative analysis, students' answers to the questionnaires, their performance in the class and what the teachers observed in the class and students' personal and informal talks with the teachers and stakeholders were compared to find patterns of convergence and divergence in the data.
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