International Journal of Research Studies in Education
2015 January, Volume 4 Number 1, 55-64
© The Author(s) / Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND
Iranian EFL faculty members’ attitude towards silent
students
Askari, Niloofar
Foreign Languages Faculty, University of Isfahan, Iran (i.asgari@gmail.com)
Moinzadeh, Ahmad
Foreign Languages Faculty, University of Isfahan, Iran (moin@fgn.ui.ac.ir)
Received: 25 October 2014 Revised: 13 November 2014 Accepted: 29 November 2014
Available Online: 1 December 2014 DOI: 10.5861/ijrse.2014.954
ISSN: 2243-7703
Online ISSN: 2243-7711
OPEN ACCESS
Abstract
Given the point that attitude has the three dimensions of cognition, affection and behavior and
that teachers’ attitude towards the students strongly affects their teaching and students’
learning, this study was an attempt to determine EFL faculty members’ attitude towards silent
students in Iran. To this end, 97 EFL faculty members were selected through stratified random
sampling from Isfahan, Shiekhbahaee, Khorasgan, Sobhesadegh, Najafabad and Amin
universities located in the province of Isfahan. In this descriptive survey study, the data were
gathered by a 5 point Likert-scale researcher-made questionnaire (with 60 items; 23 items are
related to the cognitive dimension of attitude, 23 to the affective dimension and 14 to the
behavioral dimension) whose validity was confirmed by four experts in the field of
psychology and teaching English. Moreover, its reliability, based on the Cronbach’s alpha,
was calculated to be 0.892 showing that it is of high acceptable reliability. The obtained data
were analyzed by one-sample t-test. The results showed that the EFL faculty members’
attitude in terms of cognitive and behavioral dimensions was positive and above average,
while their attitude in terms of emotional dimension was average. And finally, their total
attitude was positive and above average.
Keywords: silent student; attitude; cognitive dimension; affective dimension; behavioral
dimension; EFL faculty member