Who is an Autonomous Teacher EFL In-service Teachers’, Teacher Trainers’ and Domain Experts Views

Applied linguistics redefines the EFL practitioners as intellectuals requiring necessary initiatives and authority to be able to exploit their professional skills autonomously in the world of classroom. However, the concept of teacher autonomy has not been addressed sufficiently so far. In addition, there is not an agreement on what exactly teacher autonomy in foreign language learning actually entails. In order to address this problem, the current study was an attempt to uncover the underlying characteristics of an autonomous teacher by exploring the views of a group of Iranian EFL in-service teachers, teacher trainers and domain experts. In so doing, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 39 participants including 29 in-service teachers, 6 teacher trainers, and 4 ELT domain experts. The analysis of the interviewees’ interview data generated two major categories, namely, internal/psychological factors including strategic capacity, professional capacity and psychological capacity and external/structural factors including classroom/educational standards and governmental/societal constraints.