Perfectionism and Professional Development: Cross-Examining Experienced and Novice EFL Practitioners

Abstract

The role of teacher variables has become a major trend of study in the ELT literature. To this end, the focus of this descriptive study was to consider whether there is any significant relationship between novice and experienced EFL teachers’ perfectionism and professional development. In doing so, 60 novice and 60 experienced EFL teachers, aged 20-50, who were graduate and/or undergraduate students of EFL related fields participated in this study. The selection was through nonrandom convenience sampling; that is, the teachers who were willing to participate in the study and were teaching at language schools which were available to the researchers were chosen. The data were collected through two questionnaires: Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS), Teaching, and Learning International Survey (TALIS). Once the researchers had both questionnaires filled by the participants, they conducted the relevant descriptive and inferential statistical analyses. The results revealed that both novice and experienced EFL teachers’ perfectionism was a significant predictor of their professional development. The main imply location of this study is that teacher education centers may wish to invest upon promoting teachers’ perfectionism in order to promote their professional development.