Investigating Turkish EFL teachers’ mindsets regarding their teaching competence

The mindset of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers plays a significant role in fostering an effective and progressive language teaching process. This study incorporates mindset theory within the context of secondary school EFL education, in Türkiye, aiming to investigate EFL teachers' mindset beliefs regarding their teaching competences and explore the rationale behind their beliefs. To achieve this, an exploratory qualitative research approach was employed, with a purposive sampling method to select 20 in-service Turkish EFL teachers. Data were collected using two semi-structured interviews and a Q-Sorting Activity. Interview 1, conducted before the Q-Sorting Activity, uncovered the teachers’ professional profiles and beliefs about their own teaching, thus tailoring Interview 2. The Q-Sorting Activity, in which participants ranked 13 statements about teaching competence on a distribution grid ranging from 'cannot be changed' to 'highly changeable', explored teachers’ mindset beliefs about their teaching competence. The statements were scored numerically, from 1 to 6, and analyzed for patterns to uncover teachers’ shared viewpoints. Interview 2 was then conducted immediately to deepen insights and better understand the reasoning behind the selections made during the Q-Sorting task. The findings demonstrate that EFL teachers’ mindsets are predominantly growth-oriented, attributing their beliefs to factors such as teaching experience, effort, and professional development. Simultaneously, they also identified barriers to improvement, including overcrowded classrooms and students' fixed-mindset beliefs. This study underscores the importance of expanding research on the psychology of language teaching.