Developing and Validating a Questionnaire for Iranian EFL Teachers’ Emotionality in the Iranian Context

Abstract

Teacher emotions refer to the range of feelings and affective states experienced by educators during their professional practice, particularly in the context of teaching and interacting with students. This study aimed at developing a questionnaire for Iranian EFL teachers’ emotionality. In so doing, a qualitative thematic analysis method was used. The participants recruited for this study included 25 Iranian EFL teachers (15 males and 10 females) (in the qualitative phase) and 200 Iranian EFL teachers (120 males and 80 females) (in the quantitative phase) who were selected from different language institutes of Iran through convenient sampling. To collect the data, semi-structured interviews, audio-reflective journals, and observations were used. To analyze the data, thematic analysis and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were used. According to the results, a questionnaire namely, the Questionnaire for Iranian EFL Teachers’ Emotionality in the Iranian Context was developed in 30 Likert items in six sub-scales including enjoyment, anxiety, burnout, responsiveness, emotional support, and flexibility. The results confirmed the reliability and validity of the developed questionnaire for Iranian EFL teachers’ emotionality. In line with the findings of the study, it can be concluded that Iranian EFL teachers experience emotionality in the form of positive and negative emotions. They experience such positive emotions as enjoyment, responsiveness, emotional support and flexibility. The negative emotions they experience include anxiety and burnout. Therefore, EFL teaching is a profession intermingled with diverse emotions. The findings have some implications for EFL teachers, learners, teacher education administrators and researchers.