چكيده به لاتين
Understanding teachers’ perceptions and beliefs is important because teachers, heavily involved in various teaching and learning processes, are practitioners of educational principles and theories Jia, Eslami & Burlbaw, 2006. The present study was an attempt to systematically investigate the relationships among Iranian EFL teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, critical thinking and reflective teaching, as well as the difference between novice and experienced teachers regarding these three constructs. To this aim, data were collected from 150 EFL teachers with less than one to over 10 years of teaching experience. The participants were asked to fill out three questionnaires: the Self-efficacy questionnaire by Dellinger, Bobbett, Olivier, and Ellett 2008, the questionnaire of Critical thinking by Honey 2004, and the questionnaire of Reflective teaching by Akbari, Behzadpour and Dadvand 2010. The result indicated a significant and positive correlation among the three constructs. Also, the results of regression analysis showed that teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and critical thinking abilities are good predictors of their reflective teaching. Another important finding of this study was the significant different between novice and experienced teachers regarding the three important teacher variables. The findings of this study provide evidence for the complex interplay among teacher characteristics. It can be argued that developing one of these constructs may result in the development of other key factors in teachers’ characteristics leading to better teacher performance and hence, student achievement. The results also point to the role of experience in developing positive teacher characteristics, that is, by gaining more experience, teachers’ sense of efficacy, critical thinking ability, and reflection on their practice increases.
