Construction and validation of barriers to Iranian ESP instructors’ reflective practice scale

Abstract

PurposeSince reflectivity has a crucial role in education, it has attracted researchers’ attention in the last decades. As such, the present study aimed to construct and validate a questionnaire to assess the barriers to reflective practices of Iranian ESP (English for Specific Purposes) instructors. Furthermore, this study aimed to investigate the reliability of the scale.Design/methodology/approachTo attain the purpose of the study, the researchers developed the first item pool of the questionnaire which included 67 items. Then, 4 experts were asked to pass their judgments on the items. Accordingly, 37 items were excluded and the next draft of the questionnaire that included 30 items remained. After their feedback, the revised scale was piloted with 10 ESP instructors to check the clarity of items. Then, the scale was administered to 210 ESP instructors. At the next stage, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was run to assess the construct validity of the questionnaire. Based on the results, three items were removed. To investigate the internal consistency of the scale, a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was employed.FindingsThe final version of the scale included 27 items with three subscales, namely, learners, instructors and institutions’ issues. The results revealed that the questionnaire enjoyed an acceptable level of validity and reliability.Originality/valueApart from a few studies, no other study has scrutinized barriers to EFL teachers’ reflectivity. In addition, in the realm of ESP, no study has developed a scale to measure barriers to ESP teachers’ reflective practice.

Constructing and validating a questionnaire on barriers to EFL learners’ reflective writing

“…The second factor included the items related to teachers' issues. The findings are compatible with Soodmand Afshar and Farahani (2018), and Sheikhbanooie and Farahian (2021), who concluded that teachers' unfamiliarity with reflective practice, their lack of motivation, and absence of adequate training on reflection are among the major inhibitors of teachers' reflective practices. The results of the present study have also extended prior research by Jaeger's (2013) since he found that some of the major inhibitors to reflective practice are teachers' certain personal characteristics, their lack of skills and experience, school and district structures that negatively affects reflective behaviour, and teachers' limitations of the profession (Jaeger, 2013).…”

“…Scant attention has been paid to the barriers of reflective thinking and those studied which have been carried out have dealt with reflective practice, that is teachers' reflectivity (e.g., Kavanoz & Akbaş, 2017;Moradkhani & Shirazizadeh, 2017;Sheikhbanooie & Farahian, 2021;Soodmand Afshar & Farahani, 2018;Tajik & Ranjbar, 2018).…”

“…Inductive analysis procedure resulted in the identification of 3 broad categories of obstacles of reflective teaching including institutional problems, self-directional problems, and problems with reflective teaching principles. In the same line, Sheikhbanooie and Farahian (2021) validated a questionnaire to assess the barriers to reflective practices of Iranian English for Specific Purposes. The developed scale included 27 items with three subscales, namely, learners, instructors and institutions' issues.…”