EFL Teachers’ Professional Development, Job Satisfaction, and Reflective Thinking: A Structural Equation Modeling

Introduction

As one of the determinants of achieving educational goals, teachers play a key role in all educational systems. They have a critical role in shaping and modeling habits, customs, and most importantly, students’ personalities. According to Brosh (1996), efficient EFL teachers focus on improving students’ perceptions, preparing attractive issues, adopting effective strategies in their training, and helping students to be independent. The method and quality of teaching rely upon a number of different personal and social factors and if they encounter difficulties, it can have a negative impact on the educational system.

The first characteristic of the EFL teachers which has attracted widespread attention in the literature is professional development (PD). As Kyndt, Gijbels, Grosemans, and Donche (2016) argued, teachers need to develop knowledge and other skills in relation to new requirements and findings in the area of education. They, further, asserted that these developments include teachers’ cognition, professional attitude, and teaching knowledge. Professional development is an important factor in all educational systems that can assist teachers to improve their skills consistently. This might be the reason why PD has been widely studied and many attempts have been made to find various factors affecting this construct (e.g., Lu, et al. 2017; Majidinia, 2018; Mostofi & Mohseni, 2018; Novozhenina & López Pinzón, 2018).

The second characteristic of an efficient teacher is job satisfaction. It is a very valuable field of study, with regard to the fact that this is related to humanitarian and utilitarian views (Yücel, 2012). As stated by Yücel, a higher level of job satisfaction means that people are treated equally with an organization. The utilitarian view represents that job satisfaction can lead to behaviors that influence the performance of the organization. According to Simatwa (2011), job satisfaction is an emotional state and a feeling of pleasure arising from work performance. Teachers’ job satisfaction is critical at a university or school because this is what teachers’ productivity is dependent on.  Satisfied teachers are expected to be creative and innovative and have positive changes to time (Simatwa, 2011).

As the third characteristic of EFL teachers, reflective thinking has an undeniable role in teachers’ quality of teaching. In this regard, Boody (2008) stated that teacher reflection can be considered as a retrospection, critical analysis, problem-solving, and thinking of action. Further, Boody noted that teacher reflection can be considered to analyze and solve problems before implementation. According to Boody (2008), reflective thinking allows teachers to perform constructive operations rather than implement a quick solution for the problems. Spalding and Wilson (2002) focused on some problems in teacher training and proposed that teachers increase their capacity for reflective thinking using explicit instruction in reflection practices.

As mentioned above, EFL teachers’ quality of teaching relies upon a number of social and personal characteristics, and if these characteristics encounter problems, it can negatively impact the educational system. However, to the best knowledge of the author, few studies have been conducted to investigate the relationship between factors such as teachers’ professional development, job satisfaction, and reflective thinking, especially using the structural equation model. However, some studies have examined the effect of these factors in isolation. This is critical to the simultaneous examination of the complex dependencies among these factors identified by the measurement and structural models.

Literature Review

In this section, theoretical foundations of research as well as experimental research conducted on the three latent variables, namely, teachers’ professional development, job satisfaction, and reflective thinking are studied.

Professional Development

Day (1999) argued that “Professional development consists of all natural learning experiences and those conscious and planned activities which are intended to be of direct or indirect benefit to the individual, group or school, which contribute, through these, to the quality of education in the classroom” (p. 4).

There are many empirical studies regarding teachers’ professional development (e.g., Lu, et al., 2017; Majidinia, 2018; Mostofi & Mohseni 2018; Novozhenina & López Pinzón, 2018; Suchánková & Hrbáčková, 2017; Uştuk & Çomoğlu, 2019). Song and Mustafa (2015) emphasized the importance of increasing the degree of teachers’ job satisfaction by providing more curriculum materials or extracurricular activities to teachers as well as providing more professional development opportunities in which they can learn how to integrate laboratory activities into their teaching. As stated by Osakwe (2003), Professional development, favorable working conditions, achievement in work, and promotion are the main factors affecting teachers’ job satisfaction.

Ur (1999) stated that the most important basis for professional development is simply the teachers’ reflection on daily classroom activities. Therefore, she emphasized the notion of professional development by reflecting on teachers’ own activities in the class. Further, Jasper (2003) pointed out that engaging in reflective practices results in the improvement of the quality of care and professional development. Lately, Mathew, Mathew, and Peechattu (2017) argued that teachers can deal with the requirements of students and request time if they reflect on daily teaching activities for their professional development. They pointed out that reflective thinking is a flashback that the teachers need to mediate for their professional development. In another related study, Schön (1983) stated that the ability of teachers to reflect on their teaching is a necessary factor for their professional development.

Job Satisfaction

As a psychological and multifaceted response to individuals’ careers, job satisfaction is affected by important psychological, demographic, and contextual factors (Crossman & Harris, 2006). Mitchell, Holtom, and Lee (2001) stated that job satisfaction is more challenging for educational systems due to a number of factors. Educational administrators need to help strategic initiatives to satisfy the current teachers, which is now critical in order to improve the maintenance rate and reduce the costs associated with high turnover (Mitchell et al, 2001).

Evidence from existing researches represented that colleague collaboration, teacher self-efficacy, educational background, and professional development may have an important role in increasing teachers’ job satisfaction (Cohen, McCabe, Michelli, & Pickeral, 2009; Shen, Leslie, Spybrook, & Ma, 2012). In another related study, Duyar, Gumus, and Bellibas (2013) found that teachers’ collaborative activities, as one of the sub-scales of professional development, were the strongest predictor of job satisfaction.

A number of studies have also indicated that providing an opportunity for professional development was a significant factor for increasing the degree of teachers’ job satisfaction (e.g., Kushman, 1992; Shann, 1998). Guskey (2002) argued that an effective systematic program on teachers’ professional development helped to improve teachers’ attitudes and beliefs, their classroom management, and students’ achievement.

Bhat (2018) conducted a study on the role of gender differences (male and female teachers) and different types of schools (private and public) in teachers’ job satisfaction.  The results indicated that there was no significant difference between male and female teachers as well as public and private teachers concerning their job satisfaction. In another research, Nigama et al. (2018) intended to examine the degree of job satisfaction among private and public school teachers. The findings indicated that there was no significant difference among teachers’ satisfaction regardless of gender. The results also showed that some of the ways such as freedom in the work environment, organizational support, high appreciation, and rewards can improve teachers’ job satisfaction.

Reflective Thinking

As stated by Dewey (1933, as cited in Demirel, Derman & Karagedik, 2015), reflective thinking is “active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusion to which it tends” (p. 2088).  Reflection is considered by teacher educators as a critical way to improve teachers’ professional development (Liou, 2001; Tanner, Longayroux, Beijaard, & Verloop, 2000). When teachers focus on their reflective thinking in teaching and alternative ways to teach, they can often bring about positive changes in teaching and growth in their professional development, which was in fact the main purpose of critical reflection (Liou, 2001).

Bilač and Miljković (2017) investigated the impact of reflective practiceon job satisfaction within the classroom management domain. The participants were selected from lower elementary teachers. The findings did not confirm the effect of reflective practice on job satisfaction. In another study, Mirzaei, Aliah Phang, and Kashefi (2014) tried to find ways to improve teachers’ reflective thinking skills. They compared reflective thinking skills between experienced and inexperienced teachers, which led to the introduction of some reflective thinking tools to improve teachers’ reflective thinking skills.

In another related study, Baleghizadeh and Javidanmehr (2014) attempted to study whether EFL teachers’ reflectivity and its main sub-scales can predict teachers’ sense of self-efficacy. The results showed that reflectivity and itssub-scales strongly predicted teachers’ self-efficacy. It was also revealed thatthe correlation between these two components was relatively high.In addition, ethical and critical issues from sub-categories ofreflectivity had the highest contribution to this prediction.

As stated previously, the present research was innovative in two respects. First, it included three latent variables, namely teachers’ professional development, job satisfaction, and reflective thinking collectively in a single study. Second, it applied structural equation modeling for the data analysis in order to provide a more comprehensive profile of how these three determining aspects of EFL teacher characteristics interact. To do so, a detailed model (Figure 1) was proposed to represent the probable relationship between these characteristics.

Figure 1. The Hypothesized Model of the Relationships between the Study Variables

Research Questions

In order to achieve the above-stated research objectives, the following research questions were posed:

1-      Is there any statistically significant relationship between EFL teachers’ professional development and their job satisfaction?

2-      Is there any statistically significant relationship between EFL teachers’ professional development and their reflective thinking?

3-      Is there any statistically significant relationship between EFL teachers’ job satisfaction and their reflective thinking?

Materials and Methods

Context and Participants

The participants of the study consisted of 159 EFL teachers (98 males and 61 females) working in educational centers (language institutes, schools, and universities) from Tehran and Ardabil provinces of Iran. It is necessary to mention that three questionnaires were distributed among the original pool of the participants via email, social networks (mainly WhatsApp), and in paper. As mentioned before, 159 EFL teachers filled out and returned the questionnaires, which formed the main data for the study. These participants consisted of both novice as well as experienced teachers with their active working years ranging from 5 to 35. Their age range was from 25 to 65. Most teachers aged from 26 to 35. At the time of distributing the questionnaires, all teachers were informed of the purposes and importance of completing the questionnaires. The confidentiality of the results of the research was also announced to these teachers so that they participated more confidently.

Table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of the teachers. According to Table 1, more than half of the participants (61.635 %) were male teachers. The majority of the participants aged from 26 to 45 years (78.615 %), representing that most of the teachers were young, whereas only 6.918 percent of the teachers were from 56 to 65 years.

Table 1. Demographic Characteristics of the Participants of the Study

It is worth mentioning that this study focused only on teachers with 6-35 years of instructional experience. The dominant age group (26-45) indicated that the majority of the participants had a lower teaching experience. Table 1 also shows that the highest teaching experience was from 6 to 15 years and 16 to 25 years, whereas only 6.289 percent of the participants had teaching experience from 26 to 35 years.

Because some of the EFL teachers work in educational centers other than their affiliated organizations, this study divided them into three groups (i.e. universities, schools, and language institutes) based on their demographic data. As can be seen in Table 1, the highest percentage belonged to school teachers (38.99 %), followed by teachers teaching in language schools (33.96), and university professors (27.04 %).

Instrumentation

For data collection, three questionnaires were administered, namely, 1) Professional Development Questionnaire, 2) Job Satisfaction Questionnaire, and 3) Reflective Thinking Questionnaire. The researcher took the advice of a number of professional colleagues concerning the validity of the questionnaires in order to make sure that they are suitable for the intended purposes. They confirmed the construct and content validities of the questionnaires. The reliability of the questionnaire was also calculated through Cronbach Alpha.

Professional Development Questionnaire (PDQ)

Developed by De Vries, Jansen, and Van De Grift (2013) this questionnaire consists of 40 items under three factors: updating activities (11 items), reflective activities (13 items), and collaborative activities (16 items). It is a Likert-type scale with 1 meaning “Not applicable”, 2 meaning “Disagree”, 3 meaning “Somewhat applicable”, and 4 meaning “Fully applicable”. The reliability of the scale was assessed and approved (α=.88)

Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ)

This scale was constructed by Weiss, Dawis, England, and Lofquist (1967). It comprises 20 items under two constructs, namely, intrinsic satisfaction (14 items) and extrinsic satisfaction (6 items). The respondents are expected to answer on a five-point Likert scale from 1= Very dissatisfied to 5= Very satisfied. The reliability of the questionnaire turned out to be 0.89.

Reflective Thinking Questionnaire (RTQ)

Teachers’ reflective thinking questionnaire by Choy and Oo (2012) consists of four sub-scales of reflective thinking: Ability to self-express (12 Items), awareness of how one learns (9 Items), developing lifelong learning skills (9 Items), and belief about self and self-efficacy (3 Items). This questionnaire utilizes a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly agree) to 5 (Strongly disagree). Cronbach alpha was applied to estimate the reliability of the test and indicated a reasonable internal consistency among the items (α=.91).

Data Collection Procedure

Using a paper-and-pencil approach, the questionnaires were piloted with a group of 23 colleagues and minor modifications were made in the wordings of some items in order to improve their intelligibility. Also, the scores obtained from these participants were fed into SPSS, and Cronbach's alpha was computed for the scales (see instruments section above for details) to make sure the scales were sufficiently reliable.

It should be mentioned that a group of colleagues in Tehran and Ardabil provinces were contacted and asked to distribute the questionnaires among their own colleagues and ask for their cooperation. Because some teachers were from different parts of the country and were unable to visit, questionnaires were sent to them via the internet (e-mail and social networks) and they returned after completion. No time limit was set to make sure all items were attempted by the participants.

The questionnaires were delivered to 98 teachers in person and 145 copies were sent via email or social networks (mainly Telegram and WhatsApp). In total, out of 243 teachers contacted, 159 teachers answered the questionnaires and returned them. These questionnaires were scored and the obtained data were fed into SPSS. This step was followed by screening and cleaning the data to make sure there are no errors. It is worth mentioning that the negatively worded items were reverse-coded and the necessary preliminary computations were run to prepare the data for the AMOS and test the hypothesized model afterward.

Data Analysis Procedure:

After data collection, using three different questionnaires related to latent variables, SEM analysis was performed using SPSS AMOS version 24 to explore these associations in the path model. SEM consists of two main stages: exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The exploratory factor analysis was used to examine whether the sub-scales are related to their own latent variables. This consists of some statistical procedures such as KMO-Bartlett test and correlational matrix. On the other hand, confirmatory factor analysis intends to confirm the hypothesized model using the goodness of fit indices and examining all the relationships between the latent variables and their sub-scales.

The six basic steps in SEM, as specified by Kline (2011), were followed: specifying the model, evaluating model identification, selecting the measures, modelling estimation, modelling re-specification, and reporting results. Furthermore, the analytic approach in this study followed what Klein (2011) refers to as the generation of the model (i.e., if the initial model did not fit the data, it was modified). The general SEM model consisted of two sub-models: a measurement model and a structural model. The measurement sub-models determined the factor loading between indicators and latent variables, thus defining the relationships between observed and unobserved variables. The structural sub-model identified the hypothetical structural relationships between factors and defined relationships between latent variables by identifying the way that the latent variables directly or indirectly affect the changes in some other latent variables.

According to Hoyle and Panter (1995), the following fit indices were used to estimate the fitness of the hypothesized model: Normal chi-square, Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation (RMSEA), the goodness of-fit-index (GFI), the incremental fit index (IFI), and the comparative fit index (CFI). As indicated by Hoyle and Panter, the values of GFI, IFI, and CFI range from 0 to 1.0, with closer values to 1.0 generally representing better fitting models. In addition, the loading factors revealed a high correlation between each latent variable and its sub-scales. To demonstrate the model path predictions, two statistical analyses, Spearman bivariate correlations and multiple regression analysis, were applied.

Furthermore, SEM may develop a coherent approach whereby the models are combined to eliminate additional models and create more detailed explanations. Finally, for a clearer conceptualization of the theory of relations between constructs, SEM presents the path of each effect and correlation between all variables in a complete image(Kline, 2011). For all these reasons, SEM is an appropriate approach to examine the relation between the latent variables of this research.

Results

According to the previous section, a number of statistical procedures were applied to answer the research questions. Descriptive statistics, correlation matrix, KMO and Bartlett’s test, SEM, and multiple regression were used to serve these purposes. Table 2 represents the descriptive statistics for all the sub-scales of the latent variables. It can be understood from Table 2 that the continuous variables are not normally distributed (Skewness and Kurtosis < 2), so Spearman bivariate correlation was applied instead of Pearson product-moment correlation to compute the relationship between these three variables.

Table 2. Descriptive Statistics for all Sub-scales of Latent Variables

Table 3 shows the correlation matrix of the latent variables and their sub-scales. As indicated in Table 3, there is a relatively significant correlation among latent variables with the highest correlation between professional development and job satisfaction and their sub-scales. Furthermore, not only all latent variables are strongly related to their sub-scales, but some sub-scales are related to other latent variables and sub-scales. It is interesting to mention that there was a higher correlation between professional development and job satisfaction in comparison with reflective thinking.

According to the one by one correlation between sub-scales of the study, it can be seen that the highest correlation is between ‘reflective activities’ under professional development and ‘extrinsic factors’ under job satisfaction (r=.57) whereas the lowest correlation is between ‘collaborative activities’ belonging to professional development and ‘awareness of how one learns’ under reflective thinking (r=.02). Furthermore, all the sub-scales of professional development are significantly correlated with job satisfaction.

Despite multiple relationships between the latent variables and their sub-scales, simple correlation analysis cannot be applied as a powerful confirmatory measure because of the measurement errors. Therefore, in addition to confirming the relationships between variables of the hypothesized model, both the exploratory and confirmatory analyses of SEM were used.

Table 3. Correlation Matrix for the Latent Variables and their Sub-scales

To reach this objective, the Bartlett test was applied to determine whether all of the sub-scales were correlated within themselves and with their own latent variables. It should be noted that the Bartlett test result should be significant (p < .05). On the other hand, the KMO test was used to check the sample adequacy. This test represents the partial correlations to see if each sub-scale sufficiently loads on its related factor. The value of the KMO test should be between 0.5 and 0.9. A small value for KMO (p<.5) denotes a problem in the sampling procedure. Thus, variables with small values should be eliminated.

Table 4. KMO and Bartlett’s Test

As shown in Table 4, all of the statistics for the KMO measure were higher than 0.5 representing the sampling appropriateness. Furthermore, the confidence level of .00 for the Bartlett test verifies the appropriateness of the factor model for all of the latent variables. According to Jöreskog and Sörbom (1996), the goodness of fit indices for the model was evaluated employing the maximum likelihood estimation approach in AMOS version 24.

The following fit indices were applied to evaluate the fitness of the hypothesized model: Normal Chi-square (( ) , Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation (RMSEA <.05), Root Mean Squared Residual (RMR ≥ 0), Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI >. 9), Adjusted Goodness-of-Fit Index (AGFI >.85), Normal Fit Index or Bentler-Bonett Index (NFI >.90), Comparative Fit Index (CFI >. 90), and Incremental Fit Index (IFI >. 90). The values of GFI, IFI, and CFI ranged from 0 to 1.0, with values closer to 1.0, in accordance with Hoyle and Panter (1995), commonly indicating high fitting models. Eight criteria applied to estimate the fit statistics of the model are shown in Table 5.

As shown in Table 5, all indices are accepted for the professional development, job satisfaction, and reflective thinking model (Normal Chi-Square = 3.4; RMSEA=.03; RMR =.02; GFI = .94; AGFI =.91; NFI =.93; CFI =.94; IFI =.94). Figure 2 is the schematic representation of the modified model, accepted based on the criteria above. This figure also represents the standardized path correlations between the latent variables as well as their sub-scales.

Table 5. Structural Equation Model: Fit Statistics

Figure 2. Structural Equation Modeling in Standardized Estimates after Modification of the Hypothesized Model

As represented in Figure 2, there are some positive inter-group correlations, in which the highest correlation was between professional development and job satisfaction. The results of the correlation matrix analyses represent different bivariate relationships between the research measures. Thus, these bivariate analyses cannot delineate the effect of one measure on another. Consequently, multiple regression analysis is needed to determine which independent variable accounts for which dependent variable(s).

As represented in Table 6, professional development predicts job satisfaction (B=.625, t=10.152, Sig=.000) more strongly than reflective thinking (B=.485, t=8.896, Sig=.001). In accordance with independent variables’ B and t values, professional development and reflective thinking are positive predictors of job satisfaction whereas professional development has more prediction power in comparison with reflective thinking.

Table 6. Multiple Regression Analysis Predicting Teachers’ Job Satisfaction

Discussion

Using structural equation modeling (SEM), the present study attempted to simultaneously examine the interrelationships between three latent variables, namely, professional development, job satisfaction, and reflective thinking. It is necessary to say that this research extended the previous similar studies by examining the relationship between these variables concurrently and using more precise data analysis methods.

The first research question aimed to find out any statistical relationship between EFL teachers’ professional development and job satisfaction. As it was obviously revealed in the correlation matrix of latent variables and their sub-scales, there was a positive correlation between professional development and job satisfaction (r=.53). In addition, not only these two latent variables but also all their sub-scales were strongly related to each other. On the other side, SEM results showed that professional development has a higher relationship with job satisfaction (.66) in comparison with reflective thinking. In other words, teachers with higher professional development are expected to be more satisfied with their job. This might be due to the fact that teachers with high job satisfaction employ better ‘reflective activities’ (.48), as one of the sub-scales of professional development, compared to other teachers. They implement alternative teaching and assessment strategies in the classroom to create appropriate challenges for more active students. These teachers are also more successful in motivating students with low interest. The results obtained are in line with some of the previously-conducted researches (e.g., Cohen, et al. 2009; Duyar et al., 2013; Kushman, 1992; Osakwe, 2003; Safari, Davaribina, & Khoshnevis, 2020; Shann, 1998; Shen et al., 2012; Song & Mustafa, 2015).

The second research question intended to examine the statistical relationship between EFL teachers’ professional development and reflective thinking.  The correlation matrix of all latent variables and their sub-scales showed a statistically significant relationship between EFL teachers’ professional development and their reflective thinking (.36). In addition, the results of SEM confirmed the findings of the correlation matrix in which there was a high correlation between EFL teachers’ professional development and their reflective thinking (.62). Furthermore, not only these two latent variables were highly correlated with each other, but all of their sub-scales were related. Therefore, it would be reasonable to conclude that teachers with a high degree of professional development would exercise more reflection on the professional career. According to SEM analyses, professional development influenced two sub-scales of reflective thinking, namely, ‘awareness of how one learns’ (.34) and ‘reflection on self-efficacy’ (.22). On the other hand, reflective thinking influenced one sub-scale of professional development, namely, ‘collaborative activities’ (.29). Finally, it could be concluded that teachers with a high degree of reflective thinking can establish better professional development and provide appropriate challenges for more competent students. Similar findings have been reported in previously-conducted studies (e.g., Liou, 2001; Mathew et al., 2017; Safari et al., 2020; Tanner et al., 2000; Ur, 1999).

The third research question targeted the relationship between EFL teachers’ job satisfaction and reflective thinking. According to the findings of the correlation matrix of all latent variables and their sub-scales, EFL teachers’ reflective thinking was found to be positively correlated with their job satisfaction. Then, the findings of the correlation matrix were confirmed by the SEM results (r=.55). Although the number obtained for the relationship between job satisfaction and reflective thinking has been the lowest in this research, it can still be stated that this relationship is statistically significant. Therefore, it means that those teachers who are satisfied with their job more frequently enjoy a higher degree of reflective thinking. As confirmed by SEM results, job satisfaction affected one of the sub-scales of reflective thinking, namely, ‘reflection on self-efficacy’ (.37). One possible reason for these findings could be that those teachers who are satisfied with their job are likely to develop lifelong learning skills more than unsatisfied teachers. It could also be argued that these teachers try to reflect on what they do in their classes so that this can improve the strategies they use with more effective individuals. According to the findings, those teachers who are more satisfied with their job always check the weaknesses and strengths of their teaching and have a higher degree of self-efficacy and self-assessment. These findings are in contrast with the results of Bilač and Miljković (2017), on the other hand, this study confirmed the results obtained by some of the previously-conducted studies (e. g., Aliakbari, Khany, & Adibpour, 2020; Liao & Wang, 2019; Safari et al., 2020).

Conclusions and Implications

As mentioned before, the main purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between three aspects of teachers’ behavior, namely, professional development, job satisfaction, and reflective thinking. The finding obtained showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ professional development, job satisfaction, and reflective thinking. The findings also displayed the main role these variables play in teachers’ job satisfaction. Put differently, to develop teachers’ job satisfaction, it is important to take their professional development and reflective thinking into account.

Further, professional development has the highest relationship with job satisfaction in comparison with reflective thinking. In other words, professional development predicted job satisfaction more strongly than reflective thinking. Therefore, it could be stated that those teachers who have a high degree of professional development are more satisfied with their job. In addition, the findings of the study showed that although in the hypothesized model it was predicted that reflective thinking can affect their job satisfaction, the findings indicated that this effect can be lower than professional development. It represented that those EFL teachers who employ reflective thinking in their teaching are satisfied with their job. It was also indicated that job satisfaction has an effect on ‘reflection on self-efficacy’, as one of the sub-scales of reflective thinking. Therefore, it can be concluded that the reflective thinking of EFL teachers can affect their job satisfaction though on a small scale.

The limitations associated with research studies may have an impact on the generalizability of the results. These constraints typically occurred due to design constraints, including sampling method, measurement problems, or misspecification of expected and observed relationships. First, the main limitation of this study with EFL teachers was the reliance on self-report measures alone. The self-report measure itself depends on the participants’ willingness to participate in an honest and accurate response and to complete each measure in time. Second, since this research was a quantitative study and data collection instruments were four questionnaires, there was a very low response rate from the EFL teachers who were sent the questionnaires about an accurate experience profile and detailed teaching. As the third and last limitation, some of the participants had up to one week to complete the questionnaires on their own time and to return the completed questionnaires. During this period, these participants may have been affected by different situations and experiences unrelated to their work environment. Therefore, a procedural bias may have influenced the findings.

Any language teaching investors or stakeholders, such as educational policy-makers, teachers, and researchers might benefit from the findings of this study. In addition, the present study can assist educators and administrators to better understand the psychological and sociological aspects of EFL teachers and take measures to foster the achievement of educational objectives and remove barriers in this regard. Future studies may revise the model’s endogenous variable selection and then explore how professional development, job satisfaction, and reflective thinking might affect these endogenous variables or they can consider additional latent variables to enrich the findings of this study. In addition, it would be desirable to continuously investigate the model results and model fit employing the SEM with different groups of teachers. For example, model testing might be more informative with teachers of different disciplines or in different fields of studies. Further studies may also replicate the comparison process of this research under different conditions such as teachers of different workplaces.