Saudi Female EFL Instructors’ Perceptions of the Effects of Professional Development on Their Self-Efficacy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This research explores female EFL instructors’ perceptions of the effect of the professional development provided by the English Language Institute (ELI) at King Abdul-Aziz University (KAU) on their self-efficacy and the type of professional development training that they feel has the greatest effect on their sense of self-efficacy. This research is based on Bandura’s (1977) social cognitive theory and its subset of self-efficacy. In order to achieve its objective, this qualitative study incorporated semi-structured interviews with six EFL female instructors within the ELI at KAU, Saudi Arabia. The study results revealed that the instructors had positive perceptions of the professional development they received at the ELI in terms of enhancing their efficacy beliefs, as it enabled an opportunity for professional enhancement, positively influenced teaching practice to help students’ learning, and developed a positive atmosphere of collegiality and collaboration. Additionally, the participants demonstrated a positive attitude toward the ELI’s mentoring program, as it enabled them to be inspired by an expert in the field, improved their teaching competencies, and created a feeling of professionalism. However, the participants held a conflicting view of the effect of classroom observation on instructors’ self-efficacy. Some believed that observations represent an important professional development tool that helps improve their performance, while others perceived it as a source of efficacy doubt. Based on the research results, this study bridged a gap in the current literature and contributed to knowledge on EFL instructors’ self-efficacy and how it could be influenced by professional development activities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".