The Impact of Educational Supervision on Iranian EFL Teachers Beliefs, Perceptions, and Change in Teaching Reading Comprehension and on ranian EFL Learners Reading Comprehension

This study was an attempt to find the impact of educational supervision on Iranian EFL teachers beliefs, perceptions, and change in teaching reading comprehension and on Iranian EFL learners reading comprehension. The research design used in this study was a quasi-experimental design. In order to answer the posited research questions, 10 non-native female EFL teachers working at Iran-Canada Language Institute with the age range of 28 to 35 years old and 40 EFL learners who scored one standard deviation above and below the mean on an Oxford Placement Test (OPT) were selected as the sample of the study. The learners were randomly assigned into two experimental and control groups each including 20 students. A Preliminary English Test (PET) reading test was administered as the pretest and posttest to assess learners reading comprehension knowledge before and after the treatment. The experimental group received supervision; however, the control group did not receive any observation. Before and after the experiment, the teachers in the experimental group and the other eight teachers received and filled out two questionnaires, namely, Foreign Language Teacher Beliefs’ Questionnaire (FLTBQ) and Teachers Perceptions of Educational Supervision Questionnaire (TPESQ). In order to obtain more accurate results, the teachers also participated in an interview. Moreover, educational supervision was conducted at the beginning and at the end of the course, and the changes in teaching practices were investigated. After collecting the necessary data, the researcher used Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to analyze the data and answer the research question. The results of Mann-Whitney U Test rejected the first null hypothesis and revealed that the experimental group performed significantly better on the posttest of the reading comprehension than the control group did. The findings of Paired-Samples T-test indicated that there was a statistically meaningful difference between the pre-test and posttest of the Teachers Beliefs; therefore, the second null hypothesis was rejected. The outcomes of Paired-Samples T-test revealed a statistically meaningful difference between the pretest and posttest of the teachers perception. Therefore, the third null hypothesis was rejected. Regarding the observation checklists, it was revealed that educational supervision had significant effect on Iranian EFL teachers change in teaching. Therefore, the fourth null hypothesis was also rejected. The findings of this study can be of interest to different groups such as EFL teachers, curriculum developers, syllabus designers, language specialists, EFL learners.

Keywords:

instructional supervision , reading comprehension , teachers beliefs