Appraising the Relationship between Teachers’ Effectiveness and Teachers’ Productivity among Iranian EFL High School Teachers: A Mixed Methods Sequential Explanatory Design

Due to the primary role of teachers as practitioners of educational principles, considering teachers’ effectiveness and productivity are regarded as significant issues in the field of language teaching which has recently received experts’ attention in SLA research. In response to this outlook in education, this interdisciplinary explanatory ‎sequential mixed-methods study aimed to address the relationship between EFL teachers’ effectiveness and productivity in the light of a famous model taken from the field of human resource management now applied to the EFL domain. On this premise, out of 100 English teachers, 80 female Iranian EFL high ‎school teachers, selected through convenience sampling from 34 public high schools in Mashhad, ‎Iran, participated in the study and responded to the Teachers’ Effectiveness Questionnaire (Kumar & Mutha, 1974), and Teachers’ Productivity Questionnaire (Hersey & Goldsmith, 1980). A semi-structured interview with 15 female EFL teachers was also undertaken to help triangulate the results. Results from the quantitative phase indicated that teachers’ perceptions of the teachers’ effectiveness were significantly correlated with their productivity. The qualitative findings added to the quantitative findings by explaining several main personal and organizational issues concerning EFL teachers’ perceptions of teachers’ effectiveness and productivity, for example, teachers’ interpersonal relationships, personal needs, motivational factors, subject knowledge, professional development, personal attributes, and administrators’ support. The findings of this investigation may have some implications for stakeholders, policymakers, administrators, and teacher educators to re-plan their professional development programs to meet the real needs of teachers in their particular educational context rather than providing teachers with theory-based programs.