External Factors and Iranian EFL Teachers’ Performance: Examining the Effectiveness of Self- regulation

Purpose: This paper follows a two-fold objective: First it examines the relationship between the external factors of compensation, support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, pre-service and in- service training and Iranian EFL teachers’ performance. Second, it searches for the moderating effect of self-regulation on the relationship between teachers’ external assets and their performance. Methodology: To achieve the above aims, a quantitative approach to research was employed. The samples included two hundred Iranian EFL teachers of universities and English institutes of Kerman, Iran. The data were collected by means of self-administered questionnaires and analyzed by AMOS software. The direct structural model was employed to determine the path relationships between the external factors and teachers’ performance. Findings: The result showed that external assets had a positive and significant effect on the Iranian EFL teachers' performance as dependent variable (β = .372, C. R= 6.211, P <.05). Moreover, self-regulation moderates the path relation between two of the variables: boundaries and expectation and the EFL teachers' performance. The path relation between the other four variables of the external assets including pre-service and in- service training, support, compensation and empowerment for low and high self-regulation was not found to be significant, i.e. self-regulation moderation effect for these relations was not supported. Discussion: Working conditions for teachers should be best promote effective learning and enable teachers to concentrate on their professional tasks.