Investigating the impact of job satisfaction/dissatisfaction on Iranian English teachers’ job performance

As part of a large-scale project, this study investigated the differences between satisfied and dissatisfiedIranian junior secondary school English teachers in terms of their job performance. To this end, 64Iranian English teachers and 1774 of their students completed a validated questionnaire specificallydeveloped to investigate EFL teachers’ job performance. The results indicated that satisfied teacherssignificantly differed from their dissatisfied counterparts in terms of their job performance suggestingthat the observed differences in their job performance might have mainly been caused by the degreeto which they were satisfied with their profession. The results also showed a significant differencebetween students’ evaluation of their teachers’ job performance and the teachers’ self-evaluation oftheir job performance. Furthermore, through a semi-structured interview, the most crucial factorscontributing to poor job performance of dissatisfied Iranian secondary school EFL teachers wereidentified to be an insufficient subject and pedagogic knowledge, unequal attention to individualstudents, lack of professional commitment, interpersonal relationship problems, and demotivation.

Keywords:

Iranian EFL teachers , job performance , job satisfaction , satisfied EFL teachers , dissatisfiedEFL teachers