Relationships between Foreign Language Teachers' Cognitions and Actions: Evidence from Instructors at Tertiary-level

Abstract

Teacher cognition and teacher action are two interrelated concepts of teaching and thus ought to be studied together in-depth to understand the nature of teaching and its effect on educational achievement. Examining the relationship between language teachers' cognitions and their actions has the potential to inform and guide current and future instructional practices in language teaching settings. From this point forth, this correlational study aims to answer in what way language teachers' language learning cognitions may predict their language teaching practices. The data were collected from 606 instructors teaching English in various higher education institutions in Turkey by means of a cross-sectional inventory and then analyzed primarily through canonical correlation analysis. During the data analysis process, multivariate normality; linearity (among variables and linear composites); homoscedasticity; and multicollinearity were also evaluated. The general results indicated that the participants having competence-oriented approaches and executive learner preferences would exhibit adherence to traditional (conservative) pedagogy, but divergence from communicative practices in instructional planning and error correction. Similarly, the participants disfavoring legislative learners would tend to diverge from communicative practices in instructional planning and error correction; on the contrary they would reflect a tendency towards traditional (conservative) pedagogy.