Iranian EFL Teachers’ Professional Development Activities for Teaching Literacy

The present research is an attempt to investigate Iranian EFL teachers’ professional development activities for teaching literacy. In this regard, experience, gender, and major of the EFL teachers in the Iranian institutes were taken into account. 268 EFL teachers (n=268) were randomly selected from among the teachers of English teaching in different language institutes in the east and center of Tehran (N=2700), based on Krejcie and Morgan’s (1970) table of sample size selection. The EFL teachers taking part in the present study received the Novice and Experienced Teacher Questionnaire (Rodríguez & McKay, 2010) based on which the researcher could diagnose if they were a novice or experienced. Then, they were asked to fill out the questionnaires of novice and experienced teacher questionnaire (Rodríguez & McKay, 2010) and teachers’ professional development questionnaire (Scheerens, 2010). The data were collected and analyzed via SPSS software; version 24, and then reported and checked against the quantitative research questions of the study. The results revealed that professional development is considered significant by both novice and experienced EFL teachers. However, the more experienced ones pay more attention to the activities which could pave the way for their promotion. In this regard, the teachers with English majors showed more interest in making use of PD activities, while no significant difference was found between the male and female teachers in this regard. The findings have implications for the EFL educational context.