| Summary: | Despite its enrichment, the literature on teacher self-efficacy lacks evidential data on the
changes in both hidden and observable variables underlying this multifaceted construct. To
compensate for this substantial gap, the current study compared patterns of cognition,
metacognition, emotion, and behavior across three groups of Iranian EFL teachers with
scant, moderate, and considerable teaching experience. 382 Iranian EFL teachers
participated in the current study, filling out five well-established survey instruments targeted
at measuring pedagogical knowledge, teaching reflection, motivational needs satisfaction,
teaching styles use, and work engagement. The survey data were compared across the three
groups based on a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). According to the results,
the groups differed significantly on a linear combination of the five variables. The
discriminant function analysis (DFA) results showed that pedagogical knowledge and
motivational needs satisfaction acted as a concordant pair and explained the heaviest load of
the overall between-group differences. The significantly higher levels of pedagogical
knowledge and motivational needs satisfaction among the moderately experienced teachers,
compared to those of their less and more experienced counterparts, suggested that Iranian
EFL teachers’ sense of efficacy reaches its peak in the middle years of teaching life. The
findings may provide new insights into the ways of setting English teachers of various
experiential backgrounds on the road to optimum efficacy.
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