A Comparative Study of Novice Vs. Experienced Teachers: Reflective Teaching in Focus

Exploring our own classroom practice also known as reflective teaching refers to a process of self-observation and self-evaluation, thinking about what you do it in the class, and if it works. the current study focused on the relationship between iranian efl teachers’ use of reflective teaching and their years of teaching experiences. furthermore, it tried to find out if there was any significant difference in terms of using reflective teaching between novice and experienced iranian efl teachers. investigating attitudes of both novice and experienced iranian efl teachers towards using reflective teaching was the final objective of this study. to collect the data, a sample of 28 iranian efl teachers, 14 novice and 14 experienced teachers (males and females) based on convenience sampling were chosen to participate in the study. all the participants were efl teachers in different language institutes in isfahan, iran. the instruments included reflective teaching inventory and a structured interview. the collected data were analyzed based on descriptive statistics and the findings showed that there was a strong significant negative relationship between efl teachers’ years of teaching experience and the use of reflective teaching. moreover, the analysis of the data revealed that there was a significant difference between novice and experienced efl teachers in terms of using reflective teaching. the findings also showed that most of the experienced teachers were aware of the benefits of reflective teaching but they were demotivated to employ it thoroughly. the findings of this study could have some implications for teacher educators and trainers to employ more motivational situations to encourage the teachers to use reflective teaching.