Investigating the Relationship between Iranian EFL Teachers’ Empowerment and their Self-Efficacy as a Consequence for their Educational Improvement

INTRODUCTION: Teacher empowerment is thought to improve student learning by fostering teaching quality. Therefore, the purpose of this study is investigating the relationship between empowerment and self-efficacy of Iranian English as Foreign Language teachers. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present study is an experimental study; the population of the study includes all the English language teachers of the universities of Ilam, Iran. Among whom by random sampling, the sample which was consisted of 60 teachers were selected. Participants in this study answered the School Participant Empowerment Scale questionnaire (Short and Rinehart, 1992) as the instrument of the study. The Pearson product-moment correlation was computed to determine the relationship between teacher empowerment and teacher self-efficacy. RESULTS: The results showed that there was a positive correlation between teacher empowerment and their self-efficacy (r = 0.55, P < 0.01) and differences among teachers' self-efficacy is not significant according to age (r = −0.14, P = 0.23). CONCLUSIONS: Based on the results of the study, empowerment and self-efficacy have interactive relationships; i.e. self-efficacy in teachers leads to empowerment and empowerment in teachers leads to self-efficacy.