Iranian EFL Instructors’ Educational and Professional Backgrounds and Their Awareness of Assessment Strategies and Teaching Skills

Abstract

Within the framework of professional development, teachers adapt, develop, and complement their pedagogical competences and behavior, and they become an agent of change. In this regard, teachers’ awareness of the components of pedagogical competence plays an important role. The current paper addressed the components of assessment strategies and teaching skills and investigated Iranian university instructors’ awareness of these components with regards to their personal, professional, and educational backgrounds. In so doing, a 29-item questionnaire already established in terms of validity and reliability was administered to 72 university instructors practicing teaching in Guilan universities. Analysis of the results revealed that the instructors used different assessment strategies and employed various teaching skills with regard to their gender, teaching experience, fields of study, and university degrees. The results may be practically utilized by education authorities to provide instructors with appropriate trainings to augment the instructors’ teaching and learners’ learning in the end.