Exploring Standards and Developing a Measure for Evaluating Iranian EFL Teachers’ Professional Competence in the Private Sector

The primary foundation of teacher evaluation is establishing standards for assessing the optimal characteristics of qualified teachers. The present study aimed at exploring standards of professional competence of adult-level Iranian EFL teachers in the private sector and developing a questionnaire to assess their professional competence. To this end, initially, the members of the professional community including teacher trainers, supervisors, teacher educators, and teachers themselves were selected and interviewed to set standards through adapting TESOL (2003) standards of professional EFL teachers. Content analysis of the interviews showed that the members of the professional community recognized 38 performance indicators out of 65 performance indicators suggested by TESOL (2003) as appropriate, inclusive, and necessary to evaluate Iranian in-service EFL teachers' professional competences in the private sector. Then, a self-assessment questionnaire was designed to evaluate the professional competence of Iranian EFL teachers in the private sector. The questionnaire was administered to 344 EFL teachers in order to examine its reliability and construct validity. The results indicated that the aforementioned questionnaire is a valid and reliable measure of the professional competence of Iranian EFL teachers in the private sector. Researchers hope the emerged standards and the newly-developed instrument would be eventually implemented at national level to secure consistency in EFL teachers’ quality assurance in the private sector.