The relationship between autonomy, second language teaching styles, and personality traits: A case study of Iranian EFL teachers

Abstract

Teacher autonomy (TA) in parallel with learner autonomy affects the standards of education. In this survey, the relationship between teachers’ autonomy was focused on along with second language teaching styles and personality traits. To respond to three research questions, the required data were gathered through convenience sampling by online distributing three sets of questionnaires, namely Pearson and Moomaw’s Teacher Autonomy Scale, Grasha’s Teaching Style Inventory, and Costa and McCrae’s NEO-Personality Inventory, which was responded by 156 EFL teachers, including both males and females. Then, SPSS 26 and AMOS 24 were used to analyze the data and the following results were obtained: (a) four items out of the five sub-constructs of a teaching style as well as four of the five sub-constructs of the personality traits were significant predictors of the teachers` autonomy; and (b) the mean score of the male teachers` overall autonomy was higher than that of the female teachers. Meanwhile, the findings are best suited for EFL academics who want to be more autonomous but are unaware of the influence it has on their teaching styles and personality traits.