Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Second International Black Sea Conference on Language and Language Education, Sinop, Türkiye, 21 - 22 Eylül 2018, ss.18-19
The major paradigm shifts in educational theories brought various changes to the nature of second language learning. As students have started to move from being passive recipients of knowledge to being ‘agents’ of their educational destiny on their way to learn a second language, teachers have begun to undertake various duties such as guidance, counselling, facilitating, supporting, managing, coaching, and so on. Therefore, language teachers have to keep on learning about their profession ipso facto as their current teaching knowledge or skills are bound to wear off unless they continuously update themselves in accordance with the latest changes and developments in educational matters. The main area of investigation of this study was, therefore, “teachers’ professional autonomy” which we defined as teachers’ capability and motives to develop themselves professionally in collaboration with their students and colleagues. A quantitative questionnaire, named “Teachers’ Professional Autonomy Questionnaire” (TEPAQ), was constructed from scratch as there was no tool available in the literature to measure teachers’ professional autonomy. To this end, two focus group interviews were carried out with 15 novice and experienced teachers, and these qualitative data were used along with the concepts in the reviewed literature to write the item pool for TEPAQ. Following a number of expert feedback sessions and a piloting phase, TEPAQ was used to gather data from 375 teachers who were working as English language instructors in the school of foreign languages of state and foundation universities in Turkey. The collected data was subjected to Exploratory Factor Analysis, reliability analysis, and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. In conclusion, with five factors and thirty-three items, TEPAQ was finalized as a valid and reliable psychometric tool to measure teachers’ professional autonomy.