Leading, which is referred to as changing one‟s behavior with enough relationship to motivate the other person to follow you. Items 7, 16, 23, and 29 ask the teacher‟s skill in leading and helping the students over the learning bridge.
7. Establishing a Rapport
The seventh factor in this questionnaire is rapport. It embodies 4 items which are related to the process of establishing and maintaining a mutual relationship full of trust and understanding between the teacher and the learners. Items 1, 2, 3, and 6, test the teachers’ ability in making negotiation with learners and generating responses from them.
8. Emotional and Cognitive Boosters
The last and eighth factor which is labeled in this questionnaire is Emotional and Cognitive Boosters. It consists of 5 factors. Items 10, 17 and 22 test the teacher‟s ability in bringing an emotional environment to evoke the learners‟ engagement. Items 19 and 20 are related to teacher‟s strategies in stimulating and empowering learners‟ cognition.
Each factor includes between 3 to 7 sentences regarding its title and the participants should find their own styles among the options. The 38 sentences have 5 options for participants to select among: Strongly Agree, Agree, Undecided, Disagree, Strongly Disagree. Each of the options has a special score: Strongly Agree: 5 points, Agree: 4 points, Undecided: 3 points, Disagree: 2 points and Strongly Disagree: 1 point. When the participants selected their options, these scores guided the researcher to sum their scores up.
3.3.3 Teacher Autonomy Survey (TAS)
Pearson and Moomaw’s Teacher Autonomy Survey (2005), is comprised of 18 questions originally designed so as to elicit the extent to which teachers perceive they have autonomy in the following areas: (1) instructional planning and sequencing, (2) personal on-the-job decision making, (3) selection of activities and materials, and (4) classroom standards of conduct; in addition, the aforementioned 18 items named teaching information deal with the information teachers share about their extent of autonomy over different items). Teacher Autonomy Survey first asks about the teachers’ highest academic degree (Bachelors, Masters, Educational Specialist or .Doctorate), Teaching level (Elementary, Middle or High school) and Subject emphasis (Art, Business/Distributive, Reading, Exceptional child-gifted, Exceptional child-other than gifted, Foreign language, and …). Moreover, the options vary from “Definitely True” to “Definitely False” and “More or Less True” and “More or Less False” come in between. The questions regarding each type of autonomy – General autonomy and Curriculum autonomy, are provided hereinafter:
Table 3.2
Distribution of Questions with Relevant Autonomy Types
Related Questions
General Autonomy
1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9,10,11, 13, 15, 16, 17
Curriculum Autonomy
5, 6, 8, 12, 14,18
Recoded Items
1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18
3.4. Procedure
The procedures in a descriptive study ought to be completely and accurately described so that its replication is possible for other researchers (Best & Kahn, 2006). At the onset of this study, in order to collect data, researcher, distributed three questionnaires: Grasha’s Teaching Style Inventory: Version 3.0 (1994); Neuro-Linguistic Programming Questionnaire, Reza Pishghadam (2011), and Teaching Autonomy Scale (Pearson & Moomaw, 2005) among 200 teachers in various English language schools, inter alia, Asre-Zaban Language Academy. The teachers were requested to complete the survey during non-instructional times at their convenience, enclose and return it to the researcher within 1 week of receipt. The participants responded anonymously to the questionnaires. Out of 200 questionnaires, 162 instruments were returned. After being verified, 129 questionnaires, which were thoroughly done, were selected.
The responses of all participants were carefully examined and scored. The correlation between each pair of variables underwent statistical analyses, the elaboration of which is presented in chapter 4 of this study.
3.5. Design
This study is a correlational research with a descriptive design. Teachers’ five teaching styles and NLP are considered predictor variables and General, Curriculum and Total autonomy are predicted. Age and gender are not controlled in this study, thus, they are intervening variables.
Table3.3
The Categories of the Variables
Predicted Variable
-General, Curricul, Total Autonomy
Predictor variables
-Expert, Delegator, Facilitator, Formal Authority, Personal Model teaching Styles
-Neuro-Linguistic Programming
Intervening Variables
-Gender
-Age
3.6. Statistical Analysis
For this purpose, the researcher made use of both descriptive and inferential statistics. The first statistical procedure conducted a series of descriptive data analyses on the results of the questionnaires consisting of measuring mean, median, standard deviation, standard error of the mean, variance, minimum, maximum, sum of teachers‘teaching styles and so forth, NLP and autonomy scores of the participants. In addition, skewness ratio and kurtosis ratio were calculated to check the normality of distribution. Moreover, teaching styles’ frequencies along with normality of distribution of variables were calculated.
Taking the inferential statistics into account, to examine the relationships among teachers’ five teaching styles, NLP, and autonomy, owing to having one nominal and one interval variable and the non-normality of data, non-parametric Kruskal Wallis and Mann Whitney tests were utilized. Furthermore, in terms of the third hypothesis, owing to the non-normality of data, Spearman’s rho was employed. Regression analysis was performed so as to verify the power of predictor variables’ prediction towards autonomy as the predicted variable. Furthermore, the reliability of the instruments were estimated utilizing Cronbach’s alpha coefficient.
CHAPTER IV
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1. Introduction
This chapter was an attempt to present the data analyses, calculations and results so as to demonstrate whether or not the three variables of the study — teachers’ teaching styles, autonomy and NLP, were significantly related. For so doing, the following hypotheses were stated:
H01:There is no significant relationship between teachers’ teaching styles and their autonomy.
H02: There is no significant relationship between teachers’ teaching styles and their NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).
H03: There is no significant relationship between teachers’ autonomy and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).
H04: There is no significant difference between EFL teachers’ teaching styles and NLP in predicting autonomy?
Furthermore, the arrangement of reporting the data was based on the chronological order, that is to say:
Firsly, the reliabilities of the instruments were reported, secondly, the preparatory analyses, and the results of testing the first two hypotheses including frequency statistics of different teaching styles, descriptive statistics, normality and the final results will be presented. In the next phase, the calculationsregarding the third hypothesis including the assumptions of linearity and normality are provided. Afterwards, in order to test the fourth hypothesis, multiple regression analysis was conducted and the results are reported, Finally, the discussion of the study is presented
4.2 The Results of the Study
In the current study, three instruments namely Grasha Teaching Style Inventory: Version 3.0 (1994); Neuro-Linguistic Programming Questionnaire, Reza Pishghadam (2011), and Teaching Autonomy Scale (Pearson & Moomaw, 2005) were distributed among
2
00 teachers in various English language schools, inter alia, Asre-Zaban Language Academy, among which 162 instruments were returned. After being verified, 129 questionnaires, which were thoroughly completed, were chosen.
4.2.1. The Reliability of the Instruments
Owing to the fact that reliability of utilized instruments is a must-be-verified element in every research, the researcher, at the onset of the study, sought the reliability of the questionnaires which are presented hereafter:
4.2.1.1. Reliability of Teachers’ Autonomy Scale (TAS)
The 18 items on the scale were originally designed to elicit the degree to which teachers perceive they have autonomy in the following areas: (1) instructional planning and sequencing, (2) personal on-the-job decision making, (3) selection of activities and materials, and (4) classroom standards of conduct. A prior study of the TAS (Pearson & Hall, 1993) which utilized exploratory factor analysis yielded an instrument that had good internal consistency reliability (r = .80) with two factors: curriculum autonomy and general teaching autonomy. A recent study (Pearson & Moomaw, 2005) of the TAS which utilized confirmatory factor analysis yielded a sTable factor structure with improved internal consistency reliability (r=.83).
4.2.1.2. Reliability of Grasha Teaching Style Inventory: Version 3.0 (1994)
According to Grasha (1994), ‘ the differences in mean ratings in this teaching style were statistically reliable or significant by MANOVA analysis. (p.05). the variations in mean ratings on this teaching style was statistically reliable or significant as determined by a MANOVA analysis(p.01)(pp13)’. The newman-Keuls test was utilized to examine variations in mean ratings among academic areas that were statistically reliable each style displayed the academic areas with…’statitically reliable variations in their mean rating and are represented by the superscripts notations (all p’s .05) (pp 14)’.
Grasha Teaching Style Inventory: Version 3.0 (1994) reported that the scores were computed by obtaining the sum of the ratings for each questions. The styles are categorized into columns and divided by eight to obtain numerical average rating assigned to the questions associated with teach style.
Grasha Teaching Style Inventory: Version 3.0 (1994), as a standardized instrument, has been tested for reliability and validity by the authors of the scale and has been used extensively yielding valid and reliable result.
4.2.1.3. Reliability of NLP Scale
Factor analysis was employed to corroborate the construct validity of the scale, and its overall reliability has been r=.82. This scale is comprised of 8 factors: flexibility, anchoring, elicitation, modeling, individual differences, leading, establishing a rapport and emotional and cognitive boosters. Negatively worded items (i.e., 24, 33, 34, 36, 37, and 38) were reverse scored so that a total positively-oriented score can be achieved. .
Table 4.1
Reliability of Each Factor of NLP Questionnaire
Factors Cronbach’s Alpha N of Items
Factor I .85 6
Factor 2 .74 4
Factor 3 .71 5
Factor 4 .78 3
Factor 5 .81 7
Factor 6 .79 4 Factor 7 .77 4
Factor 8 .82 5
4.2.2. Testing the First Null Hypothesis:
H01: There is no significant relationship between teachers’ teaching styles and autonomy.
4.2.2.1. Frequency Statistics of Different Teaching Styles
In order to test the above hypothesis, the frequencies of the teaching styles in the sample were calculated, which are provided in Tables 4.2 to 4.6.
Table 4.2
Expert Frequency Statistics
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
Valid
Low
14
10.9
10.9
10.9
Moderate
113
87.6
87.6
98.4
High
2
1.6
1.6
100.0
Total
129
100.0
100.0
Table 4.3
Formal Authority Frequency Statistics
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative