Teachers’ personality: A proxy for the group work use?

Many controlled experiments, even in the realm of English language teaching (ELT), champion group work, in one form or another, as a magic bullet to educational problems, capable of improving achievement, motivation, and peace. However, it is not extensively used, so that its full benefits are reaped. Among the factors known to plague the use of group work in classes— including learners’ culture, time limitations, and free-riding—the attention to teachers’ personality, notwithstanding its importance, is elusive. To fill this gap, this survey study of 168 English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers, drawing upon SEM, vetted the relations between teachers’ personality traits and the extent they use group work in their classes both directly and indirectly as mediated by teachers’ beliefs about group work. For this purpose, Mini-IPIP scale of personality, Beliefs about Group work scale (BAG), and a researcher-developed scale measuring the extent of group work use were administered to 168 EFL teachers, of different ages, education, and experience levels, working at private non-compulsory EFL institutes in Iran. As a result, it was manifested that extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism not only can influence the extent of group work use directly but also indirectly, of course to a lesser degree, via the mediating role of teachers’ beliefs. In fact, a positive association was found between extroversion and the extent of group work use, while neuroticism and conscientiousness were negatively related to it. These findings suggest that the personality, despite being eschewed, can influence teachers’ practice.