رابطه بین برداشت استعاره ای معلمان زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان خارجه از نقش خود و ارزیابی آنها از حس کارآمدی خویش

the main purpose of this study was to investigate any relationship between high school efl teachers metaphorical understandings of their role in class and their self-efficacy beliefs. teachers metaphors were elicited through two different prompts: one picturing what they believed a language teacher should be like in class, and the other demonstrating what they are actually like in class; such dual elicitation aimed at differentiating their true self in class (which was the focus of the present study) from the ideal self. two sets of metaphors were, thus, obtained and classified into four categories proposed by oxford et al. (1998). the first category (i.e. social order category) encompassed metaphors like iron knight, dictator, manager, leader, real teacher, commander, …; the second category( i.e. cultural transmission) included metaphors like spring of knowledge, philosopher, guide, story teller, native speaker, dictionary, translator, reliable reference….. ; the third category (learner- centered growth) included metaphors like mother, older brother, friend, gardener, artist ,actor, nurse counselor, psychologist, …… and the last category ( i.e. social reform category) encompassed metaphors which conceptualized teachers role as one who cares for the societal good. student and classmate were the only two metaphors which were put under the last category. further analysis revealed that both sets of teachers metaphors were independent from their academic degree and experience level. correspondence analysis between categories pertaining to two sets of metaphors (one set for an ideal teacher role, and the other set for teachers practical role in class) revealed that teachers aligning with social order category would firmly practice what they believe an ideal language teacher should be like in class. though almost the same degree of correspondence appeared for teachers in cultural transmission category, the type of metaphors they used for their practical role (dictionary, translator, cassette player, feeder) differed greatly from the ones they had used for an ideal teachers role (spring or garden of knowledge, english citizen, native speaker). in other words, while no one believed a language teacher should be like a translator, cassette player, dictionary or feeder, a number of teachers had conceptualized their self-in-practice with such metaphors. almost half of the teachers in the study believed that a language teacher should be like a mother, friend, artist, actor,… whereas only 30.5% found those metaphors practical in the actual setting of their classes. while none of the teachers in the study believed that a language teacher should be like a classmate or student, a number of teachers (8.5%) conceptualized their actual roles by such metaphors. data on the second variable of the study (teachers self-efficacy beliefs) were collected through an instrument developed by tschannen-moran and hoy (2001). teacher efficacy was specifically examined in three subdimensions: teacher efficacy for classroom management, teacher efficacy for student engagement, and teacher efficacy for instructional strategies. the obtained scores for teachers sense of efficacy were negatively skewed, indicating the clustering of score in the high end. this means that teachers in the study had a rather high efficacy belief. further analyses were carried out to investigate the effect of teachers academic degree and experience level on their sense of efficacy in three subdimensions. the results indicated that neither teachers academic degree nor the experience level affected teachers self- perceived sense of efficacy. respective data for the two variables (teachers metaphors in four categories and teachers sense of efficacy in three subdimensions) were first analyzed and discussed separately, and then they were studied in relation to each other. statistically, there was a significant but weak relationship between types of metaphors teachers used to conceptualize their role and their sense of efficacy for student engagement and instructional strategies; however, no relationship was found between types of teachers metaphors and their sense of efficacy for classroom management. finally, anova tests showed that teachers efficacy scores were not significantly different among groups of teachers who held different images of role in class. this means that neither of the metaphoric groups of teachers (social order, cultural transmission, learner-centered growth, and social reform) outranked others with regard to their level of self-perceived sense of efficacy.