Investigating EFL Teachers' Attitudes towards the Effectiveness of Reading Metacognitive Strategies Regarding Their Academic Degrees

Abstract

Xu (2012) stated that teachers' beliefs are more influential than teachers' knowledge on determining their teaching activities, so effective teacher beliefs about learners are of importance, and are considered as integral components of effective teaching. In other words, teachers' beliefs influence teacher consciousness, teaching attitude, teaching methods, teaching policy, and also strongly influence teaching behavior and learner development (Xu, 2012). With such an importance in teachers' beliefs and attitudes, this study tried to explore the teachers' attitudes towards the effectiveness of reading metacognitive strategies which are used by high school students. To do so, 91 teachers holding BA and MA degrees were chosen as the participants of study. They all had an experience of teaching English at different high schools of three Cities in Iran. These participants were asked to complete 34 item thesis questionnaire which investigated the teachers' attitudes toward the effectiveness of reading metacognitive strategy use. The results of statistical analysis indicated that although teachers holding MA and BA degrees had the same attitudes about pre-reading metacognitive strategies, they had significantly different attitudes about reading and post-reading metacognitive strategies.