The relationship between English teachers' teaching styles and their fidelity to the English curriculum

In this study, it was aimed to examine the teaching styles of English teachers and their commitment to the English curriculum in terms of various variables and to determine the relationship between teaching styles and their commitment to the curriculum. Relational scanning model, one of the general scanning methods, was used in the research. The population of the research consists of 327 English teachers working in primary, secondary and high schools in public and private institutions in the city center of Kütahya in the 2021-2022 academic year. In order to collect the data of the research, the personal information form prepared by the researcher, the "Curriculum Fidelity Scale" developed by Burul (2018) and the "Teaching Styles Scale" developed by Grasha (1996) and adapted into Turkish by Üredi (2006) were used. The personal information form prepared by the researcher questions the participants' age, gender, education level, years of service, and the type of school they work in in order to determine the personal information of the participants. In order to decide which tests (parametric/nonparametric tests) will be applied first to the analysis of the data obtained from the research, the assumptions that must be met were tested. In order to decide the normality of the distribution, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, the other assumptions of the normal distribution, kurtosis and skewness values and histogram graph were used. In order to determine the analyzes deemed appropriate for the analysis of the hypotheses, it was decided whether the data were suitable for normal distribution by examining the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and the kurtosis-skewness coefficients. t-test for the comparison of two independent groups, as the data showed normal distribution; One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare more than two unrelated groups, and the Tukey test, one of the post hoc tests, was used to determine the source of the difference. The relationship between the variables to be examined in the study was examined with the Pearson correlation coefficient since the data showed normal distribution. When the findings obtained from the research are examined, it is seen that English teachers prefer the teaching styles of Facilitator, Personal Model, Expert, Representative and Authority, respectively, and generally tend to have a high tendency to the "Facilitator" teaching style. While there was no difference in the teaching style preferences of English teachers according to gender and the type of school graduated, a significant difference was found according to professional seniority, type of school and type of graduated school. When the scores of fidelity to the curriculum are examined, it is seen that the level of fidelity of English teachers to the curriculum does not differ according to gender and school level, but differs according to the variables of professional seniority, type of school graduated and type of school worked. Looking at the results of the research, it was seen that while the "Responses of the Participants" dimension had the highest average, the "School Climate" dimension had the lowest average. According to this finding, it can be said that the English teachers included in the study designed the teaching processes in accordance with the constructivist approach, taking into account the individual characteristics of the students, they fulfilled the requirements of the curriculum by using various materials in their lessons and they adhered to the curriculum. As a result of the research, a significant relationship was found between the general scores of commitment to the program and teaching styles.