This study explores the motivational components within teacher rating systems and their impact on professional growth motivation. Employing a systematic review approach, it investigates texts pertaining to teacher rating systems, motivation, and professional development literature. By examining various texts and research findings on teacher motivation, factors influencing teacher ratings based on general, specialized, and professional competencies, as well as experience, are identified. Drawing parallels with Herzberg's motivational theory, this study provides recommendations to bolster teacher motivation and job satisfaction through improvements in the rating system.

One of the most important issues in the realm of education is assurance regarding the quality and effectiveness of teaching and teachers. In this regard, it is essential that models and instruments be developed in order to describe and assess them. It is one of the subjects creating a lot of interest in learners is English. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a model as well as a measuring instrument for describing quality of teachers and teaching in English. The present study was an attempt to develop such a model and instrument in a qualitative and a quantitative phase. In the qualitative phase, seven factors were identified as the underlying structure of teacher quality on which basis a 48-item questionnaire was developed. Then, in the quantitative phase, using Exploratory and Confirmatory factor Analyses, the reliability, and the validity of the model and the questionnaire were obtained.Based on the findings, both the model and the questionnaire are acceptable and valid and can be utilized.

This study, first, attempted to explore the conflict or tension between EFL teacher intuition or concepts and the conception with a composite view assembled from learner's accounts of the distinctive features of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and second to investigate the latter's "hidden agenda" (Nunan, 1998) of what ELT should be. On the other hand, role of educational context as an independent variable in determining such conflicting conceptions was also investigated. The study was carried out in the Iranian educational context conventionally categorized into three settings including; authoritarian, semi-democratic and democratic, given their varying existing educational policies and planning. Both the learner and teacher-participants (N=150, 45, respectively) answered three triangulating and already validated questionnaires (Brindly, 1984 and BALLI of Horwitz, 1987) attempting both the nature of language learning activities and their beliefs on CLT. Findings revealed that the learners hold variety of self-efficacy beliefs different from those of their teachers about learning language, many of which supported to be attributed to the educational context type and language planning and the pertinent administration policies. While both sides agreed in general on the virtues of CLT to language teaching, there were interesting differences in their perceptions mainly as to lesson purposes, classroom activities, and learning outcomes. The implications of the study would revolve around the (I) dependency of reflective teaching and learning on teacher's awareness of learner's needs, capabilities, potentials and preferences or in Richard's (1996) term of learner' s" maxims", (II) necessity of teacher-learner cooperation in syllabus design, (III) significance of narrowing the gap between their maxims of instruction and learning, and (IV) awareness of the possible imposition of negative impacts like tension, anxiety and dissatisfaction on the learner's side resulting from any cognitive and intuitive mismatch on the teacher's side.

Teacher factors encompass the teachers’ cognitive and affective characteristics that are likely to affect their instructional efficacy. Language teacher immunity is one of the affective factors that determines the teachers’ psychological well-being in their settings. The present study strived to itemize the factors in novice and experienced EFL instructors’ teacher immunity philosophy. To this end, first, the researchers used convenience sampling for selecting 62 EFL teachers including 38 novice and 24 experienced teachers at ten prominent language institutes in Tabriz (Iran) as the participants. Second, they conducted 30-minute interviews with the participants for determining the factors that influenced their TI philosophy using a researcher-developed semi-structured interview protocol. Lastly, they used thematic analysis in order to particularize the main factors in their teacher immunity philosophy. The findings of the study indicated that while the novice teachers considered external support as the main factor in their philosophy, the experienced teachers regarded their internal strength as the decisive factor that influenced their teacher immunity philosophy. The findings may have practical implications for teacher education courses in foreign language contexts.

Dynamic Assessment (DA) is built upon the progress in the Vygotsky's (1978) Zone of Proximal Development and is a framework for the integration of instruction and assessment as a unitary activity and serves first to identify the abilities of the learners and second, actively support the progress of such abilities (Poehner, 2008). Considering the adhered importance of DA and in an effort to investigate the efficacy of this newly introduced assessment mode, this study delves into the results of a number of empirical studies of DA that are recently carried out in the field of EFL/ESL. The results of this secondary analysis revealed that the application of DA in the second or foreign language learning contexts enables the teachers and even the learners to efficiently identify the origins of the learners' educational problems and provide them with the appropriate feedback or solutions. The provision of solution is the main distinctive feature of DA as the static modes of assessment even if are able to identify the origins of the learners educational problems, are not oriented towards the immediate provision of appropriate remedies for the problems. Furthermore, DA is a better means to distinguish the learners from each other based on their knowledge or communicative competence and to predict their future performances.

This study examines the use of textual metadiscourse in ELT research articles written by Persian and Anglo-American academic writers. To this end, the introduction sections of 73 English academic research articles were selected. The functional- contextual analysis revealed a statistically significant difference between Iranian and Anglo-American academic writers in their use of iIIocution markers, but no meaningful differences were noticed in their use of text connectives and code glosses. Moreover, both groups of writers used theses markers in the same hierarchical order, i.e. they tend to use more text connectives than code glosses than illocution markers. The results of this study can be helpful in writing instruction, writing skills and translation.

Teacher talk is of noteworthy significance in mainstream education and several attempts have aimed at evaluating it. The existing tools, nevertheless, are only general frameworks and with no specific focus on the main functions of teacher talk in ELT contexts. The present study gives a comprehensive account of ELT teacher talk and aims at developing a teacher talk instrument whose items are specific to ELT classes. Accordingly, extensive analysis of the related literature and the researchers’ developed concept of the main functions of teacher talk were used as the foundation to develop a preliminary theoretical model of ELT teacher talk. The proposed theoretical conceptualization was refined through observation of the talk of ELT practitioners as well as interviews with ELT teachers and teacher educators. Ultimately, the theoretical conceptualization led to the development and validation of an observational English Language Teacher Talk Functional Scale (TTFS). The scale was piloted and then administered through having the talk of 182 ELT teachers rated by ELT teacher educators for final validation. TTFS was validated through both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The result indicated that the constructed items in the TTFS and the conceptualization of the construct of teacher talk were meaningful to teachers, teacher educators, and teacher observers and indicative of the effectiveness of teacher talk in ELT contexts. We hope that the present study results in a more worthwhile understanding of the functions of teacher talk and provides an efficacious assessment tool for reflective practice and constructive feedback to ELT teachers.