The Relationship between Teaching experience of Iranian EFL Teachers with Their Classroom Management Strategies

Abstract

This study has explored to investigate whether the teaching years have anything to do with teachers' classroom management strategies. Also this study has investigated the relationship between teachers’ autonomy and their classroom management strategies. In other words, this study investigated the relationship between the level of teacher autonomy and the effectiveness of classroom management. Secondly, is there a relationship between teachers' classroom management and their level of autonomy based on their work experience? Also, the study wants to see if teachers' autonomy and years of teaching experience could predict their classroom management? And which of them is a predictor of their classroom management, teacher autonomy or teacher years of teaching? The participants of the study are 54 EFL teachers, working at grade 7-12, teaching at some high schools in Arak city. Most of the participants are BA and MA holders ranging in their year of experience from 2 to30. Two questionnaires are used in this research, Instructional management scale adapted from Martin and Sass (2015) to measure classroom management strategies and teacher work autonomy scale developed by Friedman (2005) to measure teacher autonomy. Pearson correlation method, linear regression analysis as well as Kendall correlation are used to analyze the research data. The study findings show that the classroom management strategies of English teachers are influenced by their autonomy. The findings also revealed that there was no relationship between teachers' classroom management strategies and their teaching experiences. Furthermore, the results indicated that teacher autonomy is a good predictor of classroom management.