Measuring Foreign Language Teachers’ Social Capital: A Structural Model of Teachers’ Participatory Engagement and Support in Public Schools

Document Type : Research Article

Author

Department of Language and Literature, Farhangian Teacher Education University (FTEU), Tehran, Iran

10.22059/jomc.2024.378748.1008682

Abstract

Examining various dimensions of teachers’ social capital is considered a new topic; as is the idea of the school as a small unit of  society. This paper follows an approach to measuring social capital from the perspective of surveying the components of social capital among foreign language teachers. To this end, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach was adopted. It was assumed that teachers, to expand and consolidate their social capital, need to learn from the structure of professional-participatory development, and intellectual, research, and emotional support of each other in the context of schools. To collect data, a total of 143 foreign language teachers working in the Education department were selected. The tools were tested and confirmed in terms of validity (convergent and divergent) and reliability (Delwin-Goldstein & Cronbach's alpha). We used SmartPLS (V.4) and SPSS software to test the goodness of fit of the proposed structural model and the research hypotheses. Looking at the pattern output and path coefficients, it is estimated that participatory professional development and professional reflection have a direct role in building the social capital of language teachers, while expandable agency has a mediating role. Based on the results and in line with parallel studies, it is suggested that teachers' participation in developmental and collaborative activities (such as team training, joint research action, and visiting other classes and schools), along with an atmosphere of (knowledge, research and emotional) support should be included in the teacher training curriculum.

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