A COMPARISON OF IRANIAN EFL TEACHERS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE INSTITUTES AND UNIVERSITIES BASED ON ETHICAL AND CULTURAL VALUES

The purpose of this study was to compare Iranian EFL teachers in English language institutes and universities based on ethical and cultural values. The study was conducted in two phases. First, 40 EFL teachers were interviewed individually and the elicited responses were transcribed and coded using the three codification processes in grounded theory. Then, the interviewee's responses were discussed based on the categories obtained as the result of applying the grounded theory. Then, a questionnaire was developed based on the literature, the theoretical frameworks and the results of the qualitative phase of the study. The questionnaire was in Likertscale format, containing 20 items altogether and its reliability was examined in a pilot study with 40 participants using Cronbach's alpha. It was filled out by 140 EFL teachers from institutes and universities (70 male, 70 female), with age ranges 20 to 65, working at institutes and universities in Fars province, Iran, 2021. The participants were selected conveniently as going through random sampling was not possible. The validity of questionnaire was tested by conducting an exploratory factor analysis on all the 140 participants of the study and three factors emerged under the main category of Teachers' Values for Iranian EFL teachers. The findings of this study revealed that: (a) university teachers have higher levels of values than institute teachers (b) university teachers have higher levels of social and emotional dimensions than institute ones (c) and that there is no significant difference between Iranian EFL institute and university teachers due to ethical dimensions.