Exploring the Consequences of Teachers’ Self-efficacy: A Case of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language

Teacher self-efficacy, as a socio-affective concept, has been abundantly studied in relation to different factors. However, it seems that the consequences of teachers' self-efficacy have not been appropriately explored to the present date. The present study aimed at investigating the consequences of EFL teachers' teaching self-efficacy. In so doing, a qualitative research method was used. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 20 EFL teachers who were selected through purposive sampling. The interviews were content analyzed thematically. Findings showed that self-efficacy has three main consequences: pedagogical, learner-related, and psychological. Each of these consequences has several sub-categories. It can be concluded that high self-efficacy affects teachers’ teaching practices, learners’ motivation, and achievement. It also affects teachers’ burn-out status, psychological being, as well as their job satisfaction. The findings can be theoretically and pedagogically important to EFL teachers, teacher-trainers, and administrators of educational settings.


Introduction
Self-efficacy, as a socio-affective concept, was introduced by Bandura (1977). In general terms, efficacy refers to individuals' perceptions and beliefs about their potentiality to perform at a given level of attainment (Bandura, 1977) and how they might deal with the challenges and difficulties and direct their actions (Bandura, 1997). Teacher self-efficacy has been abundantly studied in relation to different factors. Student achievement is also one of these factors which have been confirmed to be positively related to teacher self-efficacy in a plethora of related studies (e.g., Almog & Shechtman,2007;Caprara, Barbaranelli, Steca& Malone, 2006;Chacon, 2005;Chaplain, 2006;Guo, Piasta, Justice & Kaderavek, 2010;Ross, 1992). More efficacious teachers are better risk-takers who instigate higher levels of standards in their classes, which in turn results in better student achievement. From a broader perspective, teacher self-efficacy has also been reported to be directly related to other factors such as job satisfaction (Moe, Pazzaglia& Ronconi, 2010), perfectionism (Comerchero, 2008), and emotional intelligence (Moafian & Ghanizadeh, 2009;Rastegar & Memarpour, 2009). By contrast, it has been argued that teacher efficacy is negatively correlated with 3 teacher burnout (Brouwers & Tomic, 2000;Comerchero, 2008). Indeed, Comerchero (2008) examined the possible relationships among a myriad of factors, namely teacher self-efficacy, status, tenure, gender, burnout, and perfectionism.
Self-efficacy beliefs were characterized as the major mediators for our behavior, and importantly, behavioral change. Over the last quarter of the century, Bandura's other works continued to develop more and more and defend the idea that our beliefs in our abilities powerfully affect our behavior, motivation, and ultimately influence our success or failure (Bandura, 1982(Bandura, , 1986(Bandura, , 1993(Bandura, , 1996(Bandura, , 1997. Bandura (1997) suggested that because self-efficacy beliefs were explicitly self-referent in nature and directed toward perceived abilities given specific tasks, they could be powerful predictors of behavior.
The related research literature has ever since supported this proposition. Educationally speaking, selfefficacy beliefs are related to academic performance and self-regulated learning for both teachers and students (Pujaris & Schunk, 2014). In the same vein, Woolfolk Hoy (2001) defined teacher efficacy as a teacher's "judgment of his or her capabilities to bring about desired outcomes of student engagement and learning, even among those students who may be difficult or unmotivated (p. 783)." The study of perceived self-efficacy and its relation to human behavior has extended to the field of education, particularly to the efficacy of teachers. It has also been investigated in terms of its relation to student performance. Numerous researchers have documented the link between student achievement, as the most important manifestation of teacher effectiveness, and teacher efficacy (e.g., Jimmieson, Hannam, & Yeo, 2010;Lee, Cawthon & Dawson, 2013;Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2007, 2010. For instance, in a study by Moore and Esselman (1992), teacher efficacy was reported to be highly predictive of learners' achievement on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, the Canadian Achievement Tests (Anderson, Greene, & Loewen, 1988), and the Ontario Assessment Instrument Pool (Ross, 1992). In addition to student-related issues like achievement, sense of efficacy, motivation, etc.
researchers have explored the relationships between a teacher's level of efficacy and his or her willingness to adopt instructional innovation (Ghaith & Yaghi, 1997;Gusky, 1988), lesson presenting and questioning, ability in controlling stress level, desire to stay in the field and teaching commitment (Coladarci, 1992), special education referral (Soodak & Podell, 1996) and predictions of student success (Tournaki & Podell, 2005).
Significant positive correlations between efficacy judgments by classroom teachers and their teaching effectiveness were first reported by two large-scale investigations (Berman, McLaughlin, Bass, Pauly, & Zellman, 1977). In 1976, the Rand Corporation published a study that examined the success of various reading programs and interventions. Teacher efficacy was shown to be strongly related to variations in reading achievement among minority students. In a second study, Rand researchers found teacher efficacy to be a strong predictor of the continuation of federally funded projects after the end of funding (Berman, 1977). Teachers' sense of efficacy had a strong positive effect not only on student performance but on the percent of the project goals achieved, on the amount of teacher change, and the continued use of project methods and materials after the project ended.
Teacher efficacy is believed to be of paramount significance among other teacher variables since effective teachers turned out to have a strong sense of efficacy; this, in its own right, culminates in more planning and organization as well as enthusiasm towards novel ideas (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). In this light, it is obvious that teacher efficacy affects and dramatically contributes to the pedagogical improvement from different angles. Despite the plethora of studies on EFL teachers' selfefficacy (e.g., Akbari & Tavassoli, 2014;Faez & Valeo, 2012;Karimi, 2011;Moafian & Ebrahimi, 2015;Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001), it is not known how teachers' self-efficacy might affect their status as a teacher and what consequences TSE might have for EFL teachers. The main objective of the present study is to explore what traits/ variables or constructs might be affected as the results of teachers' self-efficacy. More specifically, the following research question was addressed: What are the consequences of Iranian EFL teachers' self-efficacy?

Participants
Purposive sampling was used to recruit teachers who have been evaluated as efficacious based on their scores on the self-efficacy scale. This sampling method helps the researchers to have a homogenous sample of participants who have all experienced the phenomenon (Cresswell, 2013).
Participants were all selected from district 6 of Tehran, which helped the researchers to maintain homogeneity of the sample. They were all selected from high schools in two steps. They were contacted via either telephone or e-mail and were asked to read and sign a consent form. After obtaining the written consent, a pseudonym was assigned to each participant. The participants were selected in two rounds. In the first round, efficacious teachers were screened. In the second round, the efficacious teachers were finalized for inclusion in the study and interviewed in the schools at which they teach. The data saturation occurred when the 20 th teacher was interviewed. Table 1 summarizes the demographic characteristics of participants. As it is shown in Table 1, among the teachers 12 are BA holders and 8 are MA holders. It is also seen than the same numbers of male and female teachers were recruited. Moreover, teachers with different age ranges: 30-34 (n=8), 34-38 (n=5), and 38-42 (n= 7) and teaching experience ranges: 5-10 (n=7), 10-15 (n=6), and 15-20 (n=7) were selected.

Data collection
The first author completed data collection. A semi-structured interview checklist was developed, 6 carefully worded, reviewed by five teacher educators known as experts in qualitative research methodology and teacher education, and edited based on the experts' feedback. Each teacher was interviewed privately in his regular classroom. The interviewer audiotaped all interviews for accuracy.
The interview checklist included questions addressing the teachers' feelings about efficacious teachers, the main factors which led to their TSE, how pre-service education affected their sense of efficacy, how institution in which they teach might affect their self-efficacy, and how individual traits such as language proficiency, motivation for teaching, etc. might affect their teaching self-efficacy.
Throughout the process of the interviews, follow-up questions were asked as needed to clarify responses and encourage elaboration. All Data collection was completed over a period of 3 months and ended up the data saturation, i.e., when no further new information or themes emerged to add to the researchers' understanding of the antecedents of TSE.

Data Collection Procedure
At first, efficacious teachers were screened based on their responses to the self-efficacy scale. The questionnaires were scored, and those who gained above 60 percent of the total score of the scale were coded as efficacious. Then, the teachers screened as efficacious were contacted. Each participant was interviewed in the language institute in which s/he was employed. Each interview took about 50 minutes. Each participant was interviewed and asked to explain traits that were somehow affected by teacher efficacy. The interviews with the participants were conducted in English; the teachers' major and difficult terminology associated with self-efficacy was avoided. In order to elicit teachers' in-depth perceptions, the interviewer allowed the conversation to move on smoothly in a more interactive manner. Radnor's (2001) guide to qualitative data analysis was employed for analyzing the data. That is, interviews were transcribed, and multiple copies of the transcripts were printed. The transcripts were then read for topic order to draw out and list topics linked to the original research questions of the study. A second meticulous reading of transcripts helped the researchers identify the explicit and implicit categories which emerge within each topic. The categories were color-coded. In the case of more than one category in a topic, numeric coding was used. Finally, the quotes were labeled according to the categories they represented. 7

Results
Interviews with 20 male and female teachers were content analyzed. The consequences were thematically categorized into three categories: Teaching/ learning process, learner-related, and teachers' psychological consequences.

A. Teaching/Learning Processes
Results of the content analysis indicated that teachers' self-efficacy has positive consequences for teachers' instructional behaviors and strategies. More specifically, this domain consists of 3 subdomains: pedagogical/instructional support, classroom management, and emotional support. Each of these subcategories is described as follows.

Pedagogical/Instructional support
This theme consists of seven sub-themes that are presented in Table 2. As shown in Table 2, participants of the study suggested that the pedagogical behaviors, strategies, and practices they use to support the language learners' affective, cognitive, and academic development are greatly determined by their self-efficacy.

a. Overall instructional development
Participants of the study suggested that TSE contributes to different instructional practices such as process-oriented instruction, the ability to use effective teaching strategies, engaging in professional learning activities, trying new teaching techniques to improve their practices, and changing their 8 practice to promote process-oriented student learning. The following quotations exemplify the theme:

I always try to use very effective strategies for teaching my students, and sometimes I do my
best to know about the effective strategies which the other language teachers in the other countries use to teach language learners. (p.8)

b. Support for learners' language development
About 70 percent of the participants suggested that teachers' self-efficacy can greatly contribute to their teaching quality as well as the teaching strategies they use to help the language learners develop language skills and sub-skills. More specifically, they stated that high efficacious teachers use communicatively oriented language strategies; consequently, the communicative competence of the students develops drastically. One of the participants argued:

c. Employing effective instructional strategies
As reported by 80% of the participants, teachers with high teaching efficacy attempt to use teaching methods and strategies congruent with their practices. The following quotation exemplifies the theme: I observed that some teachers who have a strong belief about their teaching abilities are totally different from those who do not believe in their ability in teaching in terms of the strategies they use for teaching. That is, they use more effective teaching strategies.

d. Employing updated learning-centered approaches
Another consequence of TSE is a teacher's use of updated teaching approaches. Participants suggested that high self-efficacy contributes to the use of innovative teaching approaches and methods such as learner-oriented approaches to teaching. One of the participants argued: As I believe I can do my job well, I follow the more recent teaching methods which focus on learner-centered issues in teaching.

e. Using Computer and Technology in Classes
Results also showed that 65 percent of the participants suggested self-efficacious teachers frequently use a computer and educational technology in their classes.

Classroom Process(management)
This theme encompasses three sub-categories. Table 3 summarizes the related sub-categories. Classroom management is mainly perceived as an aspect of classroom processes which is related to how teachers try to manage students' behavior and teaching time, and provide materials and lessons that increase learning opportunities. Within this domain, participants suggested three aspects that are affected by teachers' self-efficacy: teaching to exceptional students, students' behavior management, and emotion regulation.

a. Teaching to exceptional/heterogeneous students
Self-efficacious teachers suggested that they are less anxious and more capable of teaching to highly talented language learners and those with learning disabilities. They also suggested that they are more tolerant of rude students; they also rarely exclude such students from their class.

b. Classroom Behavior Management
Participants suggested that TSE affects teachers' ability to organize students' behaviors while teaching. Moreover, they argued that they could cope with students' social-emotional behavior. That is, they are able to cope better with behavioral problems such as low achievement, social rejection, shyness, disobedience, hostility, and hyperactivity.

At the beginning of my teaching at language institutes, I couldn't easily cope with the behavioral problems of the language learners in my class. But now I am quite successful in
coping with almost all behavioral problems of language learners (p.18)

c. Emotional support
As presented in the following table, emotional support consists of four sub-categories. Promoting learner autonomy 13(65% As shown in Table 4, the third consequence of classroom management is teachers' emotional support.
Emotion support is teachers' ability to create caring relationships with students, create learning situations in which language learners feel secure to learn, and acknowledge their feelings and opinions. This aspect consists of several sub-categories such as emotional climate, the quality of the student-teacher relationship, or valuing student perspectives, promoting learner autonomy

Classroom Emotional Climate
High self-efficacy teachers reported that they could create a supportive environment in the classroom accompanied by enthusiasm, warmth, responsiveness, teacher support, and effective use of classroom time.

Student-Teacher Relationship Quality
Another consequence of TSE, which is related to teachers' emotional support, is the quality of the student-teacher relationship. About 65% of the participants argued that they have a very friendly relationship with the students in and out of language institutes. One of the interviewees stated:

Appreciating students' perspectives
About 60% of the participants argued that they are willing and able to appreciate the students' views, interests, and motivations. That is, while selecting materials and making decisions about teaching activities; they take into account the language learners' interests, motivations, and perspectives.

I know that learners' perspectives if appreciated by teachers, can be very insightful for the teachers. I try to see language learners are motivated or nor and what perspectives they might
have about the teaching/learning process.

Promoting learner autonomy
Next to teachers' appreciation for students' perspectives is promoting learner autonomy by language teachers. About 60% of the participants believed that they do their best to promote the language learners' learner autonomy. The following quotation exemplifies the theme: I know that through limited time allocated to teaching English at schools/institutes, it is not possible for language learners to learn English; therefore I teach learning strategies to help them become autonomous

B. Learner/student-related consequences
The learner related TSE consequences encompasses three sub-categories, which are presented in Table 5.  Table 5 shows that learner-related consequences are the learners' general achievement, motivation/attitude, and autonomy. Each is explained and exemplified as follows.

General achievement
Participants also argued that teachers' self-efficacy significantly contributes to the students' general academic achievement. Most particularly speaking, TSE affects language learners' general knowledge and communicative competence.

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The next finding was that teachers' self-efficacy affects students' motivation, most particularly students' self-efficacy, engagement, and school investment.

Students' autonomy
The next extracted consequence of TSE is learner autonomy. Participants of the study argued that high efficacious teachers promote learner autonomy among language learners.

C. Teachers' psychological consequences
The next finding of the study was that teachers' TSE affects their psychological being, which is presented in the following Table. As it is shown in Table 6, teachers' psychological being consists of burnout filtering, job satisfaction, and teacher commitment.

Burnout Filtering
About 85% of the participants argued the rate of burnout among them is very low. Therefore, it could be argued that TSE contributes to their psychological well-being and, in fact, burnout is, to a great extent, filtered.

Teachers' Job Satisfaction
Next to burnout, 85 percent of the participants stated teachers' job satisfaction is one of the psychological outcomes of teachers' TSE.
I never like to change my job. I guess even if I find a job with a very good salary I don't like to quit this job.

Teachers' Commitment
Seventy-five percent of the participants argued that TSE significantly affects their commitment to institutes (schools), students, and society. Participants believed that TSE is a positive predictor of occupational commitment, irrespective of the school or institute in which they teach.
I do my best to contribute to the progress of the institute. I really like to make a change in the learners' academic progress and train good citizens

Teacher Retention
Sixty-five percent of the participants argued that only EFL teachers with high self-efficacy attempt to remain longer in teaching professions. Moreover, participants argued that the level of absenteeism among high efficacious teachers is very low.

Discussion
The purpose of the study was to explore the consequences of EFL teachers' self -efficacy. Interviews were content analyzed. The consequences were thematically categorized into three categories: Teaching/ learning process consequences, learner-related consequences, and teachers' psychological consequences. Regarding the first category, results showed that teachers' self-efficacy has positive consequences for teachers' instructional behaviors and strategies: pedagogical/instructional support, classroom management, and emotional support. This finding is consistent with the findings of some scholars who suggest that the instructional strategies, behaviors, and practices which teachers use to encourage students' cognitive development might partly be determined by their self-efficacy (e.g., Beaman & Wheldall, 2000; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2007).
Another main finding of the study was that TSE contributes to different general instructional practices.
Among these consequences are process-oriented instruction, the ability to employ effective teaching strategies, and engagement in professional learning activities, trying out new approaches to improve their practices, and changing their practice to promote process-oriented student learning. This finding verifies the findings of some other related studies. Therefore, in line with the findings of the present 15 and related studies, it can be argued that teachers with great sense of self-efficacy try new ideas and are more willing to test and practice novel teaching methods so that they can bring about a change in students' academic uptake (Coladarci, 1992;Ghaith & Yaghi, 1997;Lee, Cawthon, & Dawson, 2013).
Therefore, in line with these studies, it could be argued that self-efficacious teachers are more enthusiastic about and dedicated to teaching. In addition, in line with Ross (1998) and Soodak and Podell (1993), it can be argued that highly efficacious teachers are more open to innovations and more willing to adapt teaching innovations in order to meet the needs of their students better.
Findings also revealed that EFL teachers' TSE affects their support for learners' language development and the use of updated learning-centered approaches. These findings are consistent with findings of couple of related studies (Chacon, 2005) sense of self-efficacy to implement didactic innovations in the classroom and use classroom management approaches and adequate teaching methods that encourage students' autonomy and reduce custodial control (Guskey, 1998) to take responsibility for students with special learning needs (Allinder, 1995) and to manage classroom problems (Chacon, 2005). Teachers with a high sense of efficacy have the capacity to accept more challenging tasks, determination, show more stamina facing difficulties, and become less anxious).
Consistent with Ross's (Ross, 1994) conclusions, teachers who believe more in the effect of teaching on students' learning expect the higher academic success of their students than those who believe less in this fact. Teacher's self-efficacy influences their motivation and performance together with students' results (Bandura, 1997).
The impact of teachers' self-efficacy on their use of computers and technology in classes was another finding of the study. This finding is consistent with several related studies (Tsitouridou & Vryas, 2004; Tschannen-Moran, Hoy, & Hoy,1998). The common finding of the present study was that self-efficacy affects the use of technology teachers.
With regard to classroom management, participants suggested three aspects are affected by teachers' self-efficacy: teaching to exceptional students, students' behavior management, and emotion regulation. This finding is consistent with the findings of Almog and Shechtman (2007).
Accordingly, it can be argued that efficacious in-service teachers can easily cope better with 16 problematic behaviors, most particularly low achievement, hostility, hyperactivity, shyness, disobedience, (Yoon, 2004), and students' bullying behavior (Lambert et al., 2009). In line with some other scholars (e.g., Morris-Rothschild & Brassard, 2006), it could be strongly argued that TSE positively contributes to teachers' behavior, overall classroom management strategies, and their approaches to managing student-teacher conflicts.
Another finding was that teachers' TSE affects student-teacher relationship quality. This finding is consistent with Jimmieson, Hannam, and Yeo's (2010) study on TSE, who argue that efficacious teachers have close relationships with regular preschool students. Appreciating students' perspectives and promoting learner autonomy was also found to be affected by EFL teachers' TSE.
That is, high efficacious teachers, involve language learners in teaching and processes such as making decisions about types of syllabi, classroom management, and evaluation. Therefore, in line with (Allinder, 1995;Guskey, 1981), it can be inferred that high efficacious teachers do not criticize the students for their mistakes and accept their suggestion with open arms.
The second main categories of the TSE consequences are learner-related. To be more specific, findings indicated that teachers' TSE affects language learners' general achievement, motivation, and autonomy. Consistent findings were also reported by some scholars (e.g., Caprara et al., 2003Caprara et al., , 2006Chaplain, 2008;) who found that students taught by teachers with higher TSE have better academic achievement than those taught by teachers with a lower sense of efficacy. Teachers' TSE impact on the students' motivation is also consistent with the existing literature (e.g., Reyes et al., 2012;Ross et al., 2001;Thoonen, Sleegers, Peetsma, & Oort, 2011) which shows that teachers' self-efficacy more significantly predicts the students' motivation (e.g., Thoonen, et al., 2011).
Teachers' psychological being is the last trait that is affected by teachers' TSE. Among the related variables were four psychological traits reported: burnout reduction, job satisfaction, teacher commitment, and teacher retention. This finding is consistent with Hultell, Melin, and Gustavsson's 2013 work, which indicated that decreases in TSE were associated with teachers' burnout levels. That is, high TSE reflects low-level burnout, while low TSE reflect high-level burnout (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2007, 2011, 2019. The findings are also consistent with Avanzi et al. (2012), who stated that there was a negative correlation between Italian teachers' efficacy student-and work-related burnout.

Conclusions And Implications
It can be concluded that teachers' TSE has three macro-consequences: pedagogical, learner-related, and psychological consequences. Each of these consequences has some sub-consequences. The main consequences are summarized and presented as follows: The study has some practical implications for EFL teachers, teacher trainers, teacher education programs at universities and educators in general. This study helps teachers and practitioners in EFL teaching field to extend their understanding of the significance of TSE and its impact on the effectiveness of instruction in general, their support for learners' language development, their use of effective instructional strategies, their use of updated learning-centered approaches, their use of technology and computer in classes, their instructional support to colleagues, their professional development as well as autonomy.
This study also helps practitioners and EFL teachers to extend their knowledge about the impact of TSE on the language learners' motivation, autonomy, and their language development. The findings can also raise the teachers' awareness about their psychological well-being, including burnout, job satisfaction, as well as their organizational commitment. The findings can also be used for reforming in-service training courses. That is, such courses can be redesigned in different ways, which foster and promote teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. Given that teachers' self-efficacy is affected by some variables related to the institutions, the administrators are recommended to consider designing professional development activates/opportunities through which teachers might have the chance to collaborate and participate in decision making and planning processes. Administrators can also use managerial strategies to foster the positive climate of the schools and institutes and teacher autonomy. Finally, administrators can use the findings to foster teacher autonomy among the language teachers and provide the teachers with an appropriate and acceptable quality of work-life through which teachers feel they have job security and the chance to promote. The other researchers are recommended to investigate the relationship between teachers' TSE and any of its consequences and antecedents through structural equation modeling. In the present study, teachers' teaching experience, major personality types, and educational backgrounds were not taken into account. The other researchers are recommended to replicate the present study, either qualitatively and quantitatively, to see whether the findings differ across these variables or not.

Availability of data and materials
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in my computer and will be sent upon the journal's request.