Developing and Validating a Scale for Assessing Iranian EFL Teacher Educators’ Perspectives towards Twenty-first Century Skills
Subject Areas : Research in English Language Pedagogy
Mahboobeh
Khosrojerdi
1
(Department of English, Torbat-e Heydarieh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Torbat-e Heydarieh, Iran)
Khalil
Motallebzadeh
2
(Department of English, Torbat-e Heydarieh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Torbat-e Heydarieh, Iran|Department of English,
Tabaran Institute of Higher Education)
Hamid
Ashraf
3
(Department of English, Torbat-e-Heydarieh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Torbat-e-Heydarieh, Iran,)
Gholam Reza
Zareian
4
(Department of English, Torbat-e Heydarieh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Torbat-e Heydarieh, Iran |Department of English, Hakim Sabzevari University)
Keywords: Scale, Twenty-first Century Skills, Professional Development, Teacher Education, Teacher Educator, EFL Iranian Teachers,
Abstract :
Teacher education had been addressed in various studies. Although many studies attempted to measure teachers' twenty-first century skills, there is still a gap that prompted us to investigate the area from the teacher-educators' perspectives. To accomplish the purpose, this mixed-method study aimed to develop and validate a scale to assess Iranian EFL teacher-educators’ perceptions of twenty-first century skills. To this end, the developed scale was answered by 15 teacher educators through a semi structured interview. After transcribing and analyzing the interview responses, the researcher developed a tentative version of a twenty-first century skills scale which included 26 items. Finally, the researcher distributed the scale among 351 EFL teacher educators. The results of the Exploratory Factor Analysis indicated that the scale enjoyed high validity and reliability. The extracted factors making up three components included agreement, challenges, and implementation. Based on the rotated component matrix, some changes in the organization of the items were made. This study has implications for language teachers, and teacher trainers to design teacher training courses as well as professional development programs.
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