exploring the relationship between iranian efl pre-service teachers’ autonomy and sense of preparedness to teach

Teacher autonomy and their preparation play a significant role in enhancing the quality of education and directing the teaching process toward desirable outcomes. focusing on pre-service teachers, this study attempted to scrutinize two constructs of teacher autonomy and sense of preparedness to teach, and explore possible correlations between them. employing a quantitative, correlational research design, an online questionnaire was administered to collect data. the participants, including 37 iranian efl pre-service teachers, were recruited through convenience sampling from two branches of farhangian university in zanjan and ardabil. using spss software, statistical techniques such as pearson correlation, multivariate anova (manova), and paired-samples t-test were conducted to analyze the obtained data. the findings revealed a significant and strong relationship between teacher autonomy and sense of preparedness to teach. additionally, no significant difference was found between dimensions of teacher autonomy, i.e. general and curricular autonomy, suggesting that both dimensions are equally perceived by pre-service teachers. among the subscales of sense of preparedness to teach, ‘using technology’ was rated the highest, while ‘promote student learning’ was rated the lowest. further analysis indicated that some of the subscales of sense of preparedness to teach are correlated with both or one of the dimensions of teacher autonomy. this study offers several implications for various participants in the educational system such as pre-service and in-service teachers, teacher education programs, and policymakers, as well as some suggestions for further researchers to extend the body of knowledge on two main constructs of the current study.