Teacher Autonomy and Teaching Styles: A Gender-Comparative Study of Iranian EFL Academics (Research Paper)

The education norms are influenced by teacher autonomy as well as learner autonomy. In this gender-comparative study, we followed the debate concerning the link between EFL academics autonomy sense and their styles of teaching. The data was gathered through convenience sampling by online distributing two sets of questionnaires namely Pearson and Moomaw’s Teacher Autonomy Scale and Grasha’s Teaching Style Inventory which was completed by 156 Iranian EFL teachers (both male and female) to respond to the two research questions. Then, SPSS (version 26) was used to analyze the data obtained from our three sample groups: males only, females only, and mixed. The analysis showed the female participants’ autonomy sense was significantly lower than the males’. However, females gained stronger correlations between their autonomy and the teaching style sub-constructs. Moreover, the following results could be inferred from our statistical results: a) Males naturally feel more sense of autonomy than females do. b) As teacher autonomy increases, its correlation to different teaching styles becomes weaker. c) As a teacher’s sense of autonomy decreases, his/her tendency increases to use the formal authority style which does not need much expertise and qualifications. d) The high tendency to use the facilitator style by our participants in this study can be related to the fact that about 70 % of the participants of each group have got a teaching degree.