How Can I Teach Effectively When ...: An Exploration of Factors Affecting Willingness to Teach Effectively (WTTE) among EFL Teachers

An effective teacher is defined as someone who achieves goals which either directly or indirectly focus on the learning of their students (Anderson, 1991). It goes without saying that, what can lead to a change in the behavior and learning of the pupils is effective teaching, not a mere transmitting of knowledge. It is important to know how teachers define effective teaching and what factors they consider the most important in the course of being an efficient and successful teacher. Although many studies have investigated the issue of effective teaching in past, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge no study have investigated the factors affecting teachers’ willingness to teach effectively. This study focused on the Iranian EFL teachers’ attitude toward effectual teaching. Thirty five teachers participated in this study through filling a validated and piloted questionnaire. The results indicated that most of the teachers thought that an effective teacher tries to encourage pupil participation and gets all the students involved. The results further depicted, “Teachers’ beliefs and previous experience” was the top selected factor leading to (in)effective teaching among the subjects. The findings of this study can have important implications for teacher educators and also EFL teachers themselves.


Introduction
It goes without saying that a teacher and his/her abilities regarding effective teaching can have a great impact on the process and quality of learning among the students.Even it is argued (Richardson, 1996) that teachers' ideas about the distinguishing features of an effective teacher can influence their instructional procedure.In fact teachers play a fundamental role in their pupils' academic achievement.As Markley (2004) states effective and efficient learning of the students in classes depends to a great extent on teachers and their actions in the classes."Teachers and classroom process are now front and center, and they are generally agreed to be key to education quality" (Leu, 2005, p. 2).Moreover, the teachers' perceptions of effective teaching and characteristics of an effective teacher can to a large extent predict their behavior in the classroom, methodologies used, and how they manage the instruction (Ghaith & Shaaban, 1999;Chacón, 2005).As a result, it seems that the teachers' perceptions and understandings of an effective teacher can extremely manipulate their instruction and accordingly their learners' learning (Dembo & Gibson, 1985;Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2000).This will further call for the necessity of doing more in-depth research on the perceptions of teachers regarding the notion of effective teaching and the probable problems or factors that may inhibit it.This study aims to explore Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers' perceptions of effective teaching and the elements and the reasons which may influence their willingness to be an effective and efficient teacher.2. Review of the literature 2.1 Theoretical background "Effective teaching is concerned with what aspects of the learning experience contribute to its effectiveness and how these aspects have the effect they do" (Kyriacou, 2009, p. 15).With regard to these two notions of what and how of teaching, three different models of effective teaching have emerged which are indeed complementary.It seems that they are three different ways of looking at the same thing.a) The first model: A surface level of analysis Model number one (Figure 1) is in fact mostly based on theories of effective teaching.It argues that there are two crucial and distinguishing elements regarding the concept of effective teaching.The two constructs include active learning time (ALT) and quality of instruction (QI).Active learning time (ALT) is also referred to as "academic learning time" or "time-on-task".It is defined as the amount of time that the students, who are actively engaged in the learning task, spend in order to reach the desired results.In addition, quality of instruction (QI) is concerned with the quality of the tasks and activities with a focus on their efficacy in terms of presentation and suitability to lead to the desired outcome.Basically model 1 asserts that effective teaching is a matter of maximizing active learning time and quality of instruction (Galton, 2007;Wilen, Hutchinson, & Ishler, 2008).According to Kyriacou (2009, p. 17) "model 1 has been termed a surface level of analysis because reference to the two central constructs of ALT and QI indicate the most crucial aspects of effective teaching in terms of the broadest constructs of value".The second model (Figure 2) of thinking about effective teaching attempts to distinguish the foremost psychological variables which are involved in teaching effectively.To put it another way, it elaborates more on the surface level of analysis model, but with an emphasis on psychological perspective."The psychological level of analysis attempts to link the process variables with educational outcomes by explaining this influence in terms of the key psychological concepts, principles and processes involved, and as such offers a deeper level explanation of effective teaching" (Kyriacou, 2009, p. 17).
Figure 2. Model 2: A psychological level of analysis Some of the major psychological concepts, principles and processes which have been argued (Slavin, 2006;Woolfolk, 2007;Woolfolk, Hughes, & Walkup, 2008) to underlie effective teaching include: attention, memory, information processing, transfer of learning, reinforcement, feedback, motivation, ability, expectations and self-concept.

c) The third model: A pedagogical (craft of teaching) level of analysis
The third model, as depicted in Figure 3, is largely originated from the viewpoints of teacher educators regarding effective teaching (Kerry and Wilding, 2004;Wragg, 2005).It mainly is concerned with defining and describing teaching so that it is of use to both novice teachers who are passing training courses and also experienced teachers.It is indeed based on the ways that the teachers themselves think and talk about their own teaching.It also covers issues related to teachers' advice to novice teachers.This model distinguishes teaching as an administrative and decisionmaking activity.It mainly tries to identify teaching tasks and the type of management activity which is required for an effective teaching.2.2 Previous studies on the notion of effective teaching Since 1960s, several research studies have been conducted on the notion of teacher effectiveness from different perspectives (e.g. on effective school teachers by : Crawford & Bradshaw, 1968;Minor, Onwuegbuzie, & Witcher, 2002, and effective institutions of higher education teachers by : Feldman, 1989;Marsh & Roche, 1993).According to Anderson (1991) "… an effective teacher is one who quite consistently achieves goals which either directly or indirectly focuses on the learning of their students" (p.18).Dunkin (1997) considered that teacher effectiveness is connected to the degree to which a teacher accomplishes the preferred effects on the students.Leu (2005, p. 23) further summarizes the characteristics of good teachers which is presented in the Table 1.Hopkins and Stern (1996) proposed the following list of characteristics for excellent and effective teachers: a.A real and fervent commitment to doing the best for the students b.Love of children along with a caring relationships c.Sufficient knowledge regarding pedagogical instruction d.Using a diversity of models of teaching and learning e.Mutual and joint working style with colleagues f.Reflective and insightful practice of teaching in classrooms Still one other important characteristic of effective teachers is the extent to which they provide the opportunity to learn (OTL) for the learners.Anderson (1991, p. 27) defined OTL "as the extent to which students are given instruction on the knowledge and skills which are (1) related to the primary curricular goals and objectives, or (2) important enough to be included on outcome measures of student learning."Many factors can determine the degree of the OTL, time being one of the most central one.In order for the students to learn something, they need to be taught about it.It is the responsibility of a teacher to provide the learners with opportunities and times for learning.Kyriacou (2009) reviews the previous studies done on effective teaching (e.g.Good and Brophy, 2003;Petty, 2006;Stronge, 2007)  Vegas and Petrow (2008) categorized the variables that influence teacher effectiveness along these lines: 1.The characteristics, behaviors, and personalities of the students: (it more specifically includes some features such as: health and nourishment, preschool experience, age of entering the school, support from the family (parents, brothers, and sisters), socioeconomic status, and home language) 2. The characteristics and behaviors of school teachers: (it more specifically includes some features such as: materials and textbooks to be taught, the size of class, peer group and school climate, and the amount of time to be spent in the school day and year, motivation, knowledge/education, pedagogy, time in the profession/experience, rotation and turnover, and sense of professional engagement in job) 3. Organizational factors: (it more specifically includes some features such as: teacher salaries; level of decision-making authority attributed to the teachers; technical assistance and financing provided; course curriculum and standards; national assessment; and involvement of the teachers' unions, parents, and community).
Table 1.Qualities of good teachers (Leu, 2005, p. 23) Effective teachers have: § Sufficient knowledge of subject matter to teach with confidence § Knowledge and skills in a range of appropriate and varied teaching methodologies § Knowledge of the language of instruction § Knowledge of, sensitivity to, and interest in young learners § Ability to reflect on teaching practice and children's responses § Ability to modify teaching/learning approaches as a result of reflection § Ability to create and sustain an effective learning environment § Understanding of the curriculum and its purposes, particularly when reform programs and new paradigms of teaching and learning are introduced § General professionalism, good morale, and dedication to the goals of teaching § Ability to communicate effectively § Ability to communicate enthusiasm for learning to students § Interest in students as individuals, sense of caring and responsibility for helping them learn and become good people, and a sense of compassion § Good character, sense of ethics, and personal discipline § Ability to work with others and to build good relationships within the school and community To sum up, it has been pointed out (Kyriacou, 2009) that when thinking about effective teaching, we need to take into account the context and the nature of the desired educational outcomes.Remembering this fact, there are still some gaps in the literature.First, although the concept has been studied from different viewpoints (e.g.teachers and students by: Brosh, 1996; Lang, McKee, & Conner, 1993, males and females by: Witcher, Onwuegbuzie, & Minor, 2001;Minor, Onwuegbuzie, Witcher, & James, 2002, good students and less-good students by: Koutsoulis, 2003, and students with different majors by: Check, 1986), there is a dearth of research on Iranian EFL teachers' perception of effective teaching.Second, to the best of the researchers' knowledge, no study has been conducted on the topic of effective teaching form the viewpoint of English teachers in the EFL context of Iran.As mentioned before, the different norms and regularities in different societies around the world may pose various definitions of effective teaching.Third, a more important notion deserving more attention in this domain may be exploring the reasons which may prohibit teachers from being effective.In other words the issue of teachers' willingness to be an effective teacher has not been investigated before.These gaps in the literature encouraged the researchers to conduct this research and explore the following research questions: 1) How do the Iranian EFL teachers define effective teaching?
2) What factors can affect the Iranian EFL teachers' willingness to teach effectively?Which one is the most predominant one?3. Method 3.1 Participants Altogether, 35 Iranian English teachers, 16 males and 19 females, participated in this study.They had majored in one of the four major fields of study found in the departments of foreign languages and linguistics in the Iranian universities, which include Translation Studies, English Literature, TEFL, and Linguistics.The mean age of the participants was 29.49 (SD = 7.62) with the minimum age of 23 and a maximum of 52 years.The teaching experience of these teachers ranged from 5 to more than 10 years.The participants of this study were language teachers teaching mainly teaching in the language institutes of Tehran and Karaj (e.g.Jahad Daneshgahi, Kish, Zabansara, & Milad) and were selected based on their willingness to contribute and availability.

Instrument
In order to respond to our first research question, that is discovering Iranian EFL teachers' perception of effective teaching, sixteen items were proposed to the subjects.These items were different definitions of effective teaching.The participants were asked to rate them based on a 6-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 to 6: (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) slightly disagree, (4) slightly agree, (5) agree, (6) strongly agree) to show their degree of agreement with the suggested criteria.However, the main instrument used in this study was a 31-item questionnaire, developed by the researchers themselves (used to answer the second research question).In developing the questionnaire, the guidelines and instructions in Khatib and Rezaei (2013) besides the ones in Rezanejad and Rezaei (2013) were taken into account.As our first step in developing the survey, we reviewed the literature on effective teaching (e.g.Bulger, Mohr, & Walls, 2002;Ghasemi & Hashemi, 2011;Zhang, 2009).By doing so, we could decide on the main elements and factors to include in our questionnaire.It is worth mentioning that in order to meet content validity, the items were designed in such a way that they directly tapped our research questions.Moreover, the constructed items were later consulted with a panel of experts.By doing so, some items were discarded, some refined, and the rest maintained.The final questionnaire includes six major sections with items based on a 6-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 to 6: (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) slightly disagree, (4) slightly agree, (5) agree, and (6) strongly agree.The questionnaire comprised of six main sections, with a last part asking information on personal information.To make the respondents feel more comfortable, there was no inquiry for their names.Also, at the end of each item a blank space was left so that the respondents could add their comments.In addition, to make sure of the reliability of the survey, it was piloted with 25 Iranian Language teachers who were similar to the planned population of our study.The results for the Cronbach's Alpha showed that the internal consistency of the whole questionnaire was 0.81 which depicts an acceptable and high degree of reliability.

Data collection procedure
To facilitate the process of data collection in this study, the researchers uploaded both the main questionnaire and the sixteen proposed definitions of effective teaching in www.surveymonkey.comwebsite.After receiving the links to the on-line questionnaires, they were sent to the subjects.The participants were selected based on their willingness to contribute and availability.Besides, they were asked to send the link of the questionnaire to their friends too.That way, all the data was collected on-line and through the electronic form of the survey.

Results and Discussion
The first research question in this study was: § How do the Iranian EFL teachers define effective teaching?In order to figure out our participants' views regarding a definition of effective teaching, sixteen sentences referring to different dimensions and definitions of effective teaching (Taken from: Good and Brophy, 2003;Petty, 2006;Stronge, 2007) were proposed to the teachers.The respondents were supposed to identify their degree of agreement with the mentioned sentences.As illustrated in Table 2, all items, except one, received a mean rating of above 5.However, the results showed that one of the items was regarded as a distinctive feature of effective teachers more than any other feature.More than anything else, the teachers in this study thought that an effective teacher encourages pupil participation and gets all the students involved.Making all students involved in the lesson was the most important factor for the participants.They considered a teacher not being able to fully involve the pupils during teaching, as an unqualified teacher.Next was the second item which received a mean rating of 5.63.It was mainly concerned with using a variety of learning activities and teaching techniques while teaching.The second research question in this study was: § What factors can affect the Iranian EFL teachers' willingness to teach effectively?Which one is the most predominant one?As indicated in Table 3, six major factors were suggested to the participants which could probably predict the likelihood of effective teaching.As depicted, the item "Teachers' beliefs and previous experience" was the top selected factor leading to (in)effective teaching.From among the thirty-five respondents in this study, a mean rating of 5.22 was obtained for this item.The next most frequent choice was related to the element of "The students" with a mean rating of 5.18 from the teachers.Next were the factors of "The institute", "Financial issues", "The colleagues", "The book and material" which received mean ratings of 5.12, 4.97, 4.49, and 4.46 respectively.As mentioned before, the questionnaire consisted of six main sections.In the first part, seven items were proposed which were related to the teachers' beliefs and previous experiences regarding teaching effectively.A summary of results concerning this section is presented below in Table 4.As illustrated in the table, the second item received the highest mean from among the participants.A mean rating of 5.74 was allocated to the item emphasizing the importance of having a plan for teaching.Next, most of the teachers thought that teachers, who believe in their responsibility as making a positive difference in the lives of their students, care more about effective teaching and try to teach better.A mean rating of 5.51 was assigned to this item.Items 3, 5, 7, 4, and 1 received a mean of 5. 34, 5.17, 5.11, 5.11, and 4.54 correspondingly.5.17 1.27 6. Teachers, who believe in their responsibility as making a positive difference in the lives of their students, care more about effective teaching.The next category in the questionnaire was specifically attributed to the effect of the students themselves in the teaching behavior of the teachers.As depicted in Table 5, more than anything else (Mean = 5.66) the teachers thought that if the students have homogeneous learning styles and be roughly of the same age, this will facilitate the teaching process.This may have arisen from the typical condition that Iranian teachers face in language institutes.Unfortunately, most language schools do not have enough facilities to provide the learners with different language classes for different age groups, proficiency levels, and backgrounds.In addition, an equal mean rating score of 5.23 was observed for items 9 and 10 which focused on the significance of the students' attention and proper behavior in class as determining causes of effective teaching.Moreover, items 11 and 8 received a mean rating of 5.09 and 4.74 respectively.The items in the third section of the questionnaire were designed in order to collect information regarding the influence of colleagues in effective teaching.As can be seen in Table 6, this category received low mean ratings comparing the other categories.Item 13, which put emphasis on a sense of competition among the teachers, received the lowest mean (Mean = 3.83).interestingly, on the other hand, item 16 which called attention to the significance of cooperation among teachers in order to be an effective teacher, received the highest mean (Mean = 5.29).More than any other thing concerning their colleagues, the participants considered this sense of cooperation among the teachers as the most important factor leading to effective teaching.As shown in Table 8, items 23 to 27 were designed to gauge Iranian EFL teachers' perspectives regarding the financial issues of teaching.The results showed that though economical issues are not the most important factor for teachers, still it comprises a significant issue.Unfortunately, English teachers in Iran don't enjoy much advantage from the teaching context.Even though the salaries are low and too low in some cases, Iranian teachers feel that they are responsible toward their learners.That's why this factor was not the first one in our list.
Finally, in items 28 to 31, the element of the language institute and its influence on the teachers' teaching efficacy was investigated.Surely the language school, its principal, and rules and regulations can affect the teaching style of the teachers.That may be due to the divergent individual differences among the teachers.As the teachers themselves are so varied in personality, style, background, and personal features, they would respond differently to different rules.As mentioned before in Table 9, a mean rating score of 5.12 was discovered for this element and it was also depicted that this factor was the third important factor among all the mentioned elements.

Conclusion and Implications
The present study was an attempt to gauge Iranian EFL teachers' perceptions of effective teaching, their major definition of the term efficient teaching, and chiefly the barriers to being an resourceful teacher.The results indicated that more than anything else, the participants asserted that efficient teaching entails the involvement of the whole class.As mentioned in the results section, a mean rating of 5.71 was allocated to the item pertaining to this fact.Most of the teachers thought that in order to have a successful teaching, the teacher needs to encourage all pupils to participate in class work.This seems to be good pierce of news.It appears that the new generation of teachers in Iran is totally different from the old ones.Unlike the past generations of teachers who were much less interested in the involvement of students, the teachers of the present time are more engrossed by involving the whole class.This can be originated from the rise in the academic awareness and educational knowledge of the teachers due to Iranian's inclination to higher education in recent years.The recent years of TEFL industry in Iran has seen many EFL teachers with higher education like MA and PhDs.
In the same lines, the teachers thought that the teachers' beliefs and previous experiences is the most influential factor in the effectiveness of teaching which can instigate from the same reason.It seems that due to the raised academic awareness and knowledge of the teachers, the personal beliefs of teachers is the most important element in their success and failure.As mentioned, some other factors were also suggested to the teachers, such as the students, financial issues, and the institute.But the results showed that the leading criterion referred back to the teachers themselves.It shows that teachers themselves are as well aware and conscious of the importance of education and training courses for teachers in order to teach better.
To the authors of the present study, the most important implication of this study is attributed to teacher educators who prepare EFL teachers for handling a language course.One of the mostly neglected issues in teacher training courses is the importance and significance which should be allocated to effective teaching.Although there are many factors which are involved in conduction of a language class in the most efficient way, like the students, the material, financial issues, and facilities, which are in fact out of direst control of the teacher, there are still some issues to be regarded with more care by the teachers.This careful attention will further lead to effective teaching.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Model 1: A surface level of analysis

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Model 3: A pedagogical (craft of teaching) level of analysis

Table 2 .
Descriptive statistics concerning the different definitions of effective teaching

Table 3 .
Descriptive statistics for factors influencing effective teaching

Table 4 .
Descriptive statistics for items under the category of "Teachers' beliefs and previous experience"

Table 5 .
Descriptive statistics for items under the category of "The students"

Table 6
Items 18 to 22 were allocated to the impact of the textbook and materials to be taught.As illustrated in Table7, item 19 obtained a mean rating of 5.03.Overall, Iranian teachers thought that the content, style, and quality of the book plays a leading role in teacher efficacy.Items 18, 20, 21, and 22 each obtained a mean rating of 4.89, 4.37, 4.29, and  3.74 respectively.

Table 9 .
Descriptive statistics for items under the category of "The institute"