A Sociopsychological Study of Professional Competencies of a 21st Century EFL Teacher

1. PhD Candidate, Department of English, Torbat-e Heydarieh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Torbat-e Heydarieh, Iran, 2. Asst. Prof., Department of English, Torbat-e Heydarieh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Torbat-e Heydarieh, Iran, *Corresponding author email: hamid.ashraf.elt@gmail.com 3. Asst. Prof., Department of English, Torbat-e Heydarieh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Torbat-e Heydarieh, Iran 4. Department of Language Education, University of Bojnord, Bojnord, Iran Introduction Education is the capability to face life’s circumstances, it is a character-building process, attracting one’s personality and making him/her rational, competent, alert and smart. Twenty first century is illustrated by the surfacing of multiculturalism due to industrialization, urbanization, globalization and disintegration in the family system. It is characterized as the century of stress and strain (Kulshrestha & Pandey, 2013). Since, education is analyzed as a device to expand the cognitive qualities, tolerance and understanding of people, it should organize the younger generation to realize and look into the realities of globalization. Today’s societies are putting their challenging demands on teachers, who are tackling with difficulties in their life. In this context, the schools and the teachers have more responsibilities in shaping the character of the students. Thus, the role of the teacher in the society is crucial for its development. The quality of training is a focal subject in education systems. The quality of instruction is progressively judged by concentrating on students’ performance, what students actually learn, and how well they learn it (Kulshrestha & Pandey, Abstract: This article reports on a sociopsychological study designed to investigate the components of 21st century teachers’ professional competencies in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context in Iran. A total number of 30 members of the English language teaching (ELT) professional community including experienced university teacher educators, supervisors in the private sector, teacher trainers, and EFL teachers in the public and private sectors, participated in this study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. For data analysis, qualitative content analysis was used. An independent coder who was an expert in this field was suggested to code one part of interview transcription randomly. An inter-coder agreement of 94.77% was gained. After analyzing the data, six main categories of professional competencies of a 21st century EFL teacher were identified: personality factors, interpersonal factors, professional factors, factors related to teaching materials, learner factors, and assessment factors. The findings contributed empirical evidence to an understanding of Iranian EFL teachers’ professional competencies in their teaching profession in the 21st century that can be utilized as a framework for the improvement of teacher education policy and the design and implementation of teacher-training programs.