a comparative study of private and public efl teachers’ job satisfaction during online education

The outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic has drastically changed the educational systems in the world. the change in teaching modality from in-person to online has encountered language teachers with many issues and stressors to cope with. the purposes of this study were three-fold. firstly, it tried to explore the public and private efl teachers’ level of job satisfaction during the covid-19 pandemic. secondly, it aimed to compare the level of job satisfaction among teachers teaching in public schools (ps) and private language institutes (pli). thirdly, the study examined the causes of teachers’ dissatisfaction, and the actions or interventions which are required to improve teachers’ job satisfaction. the participants of the study were 268 iranian efl teachers (108 teaching at ps and 160 teaching at pli). adopting a mixed-method design, in the quantitative phase of the study, 268 efl teachers were asked to answer ho and au's (2006) job satisfaction questionnaire, and in the qualitative phase, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 efl teachers (10 from ps and 10 from pli). the results of the first phase of the study indicated a low level of job satisfaction among teachers teaching in both contexts. in addition, there was a significant difference between the level of job satisfaction among teachers in ps and pli (p.