The Relationship between EFL Teachers Thinking Styles and Their Professional Success

Teachers are of the key elements for the success of any educational programs. So, better understanding of them makes path to understand better ways for having successful educational systems. Throughout recent decades many researchers and theorists emphasized the effects of thinking styles as an influential factor on teaching and learning environments. Therefore this study aimed to investigate the relationship between teachers’ thinking styles and their professional success in English as a foreign language (EFL) context of Iran, and also whether gender makes any differences in professional success of EFL teachers or not. For the purpose, 70 EFL teachers (40female and 30male) and their students (N: 1540) from different high schools in Province of Kerman took part in the study. Multiple sets of data for this study came from Sternberg and Wagners’ Thinking Styles Inventory (1992) which is based on the theory of mental self- government for understanding teachers preference thinking styles and Pishghadam & Moafians’ Characteristics of Successful EFL Teachers Questionnaire (2009) which was distributed among the students of those teachers to evaluate the teachers' performance in terms of teacher's teaching capabilities, personality, order and regularity, supplementary programs and activities, social and educational life. The first questionnaire was administered at the beginning of the term, and the second at the end of the term. The subsequent data analysis and statistical calculations via Pearson product correlation coefficient and t-test revealed a positive correlation between teachers thinking styles and their professional success. According to the study teachers with legislative, oligarchic, global, and liberal thinking styles were the most successful teachers. Analysis of the data also showed a positive relationship between the two scopes of thinking styles, namely internal and external. Finding indicated that there is no significant difference between male and female EFL teachers in their professional success

Keywords:

Thinking style , Professional success , English as foreign language