EFL teachers' self-reported perceptions and practices towards positive classroom environment in online education

Creating a positive learning environment is one of the most important factors in online education. This study aims to investigate the EFL teachers' self-reported perceptions and self-reported practices of positive classroom environment in online education, correlation between the teachers' self-reported perceptions and practices of positive classroom environment, and if there are significant differences between the teachers' self-reported perceptions and practices in online education in terms of gender and years of teaching experience. The participants of the study were 94 EFL teachers, working in different schools in a town in Kahramanmaraş province. A survey based research model was adopted to collect quantitative data using convenience sampling, and a single focus group interview was administered with five volunteer teachers to collect qualitative data to support the survey findings. As the data collection tool, The Classroom Environment Questionnaire for Online Teaching was developed by the researcher, particularly based on the study by İnözü and Şahinkarakaş (2016). In addition, independent sample t-tests were applied to identify EFL teachers' perceptions and practices for the sake of a positive classroom environment in online teaching. Correlation analysis was conducted to determine whether EFL teachers' self-reported perceptions correlated with their self-reported practices of positive classroom environment. Furthermore, the independent sample t-tests was used to identify the effects of gender and class size and ANOVA was used to identify teachers' experience of teaching in relation to teachers' perceptions and practice of positive online teaching environment. T-test was also used to determine the effects of gender and student number and ANOVA was used to find out the effects of teaching experience on the perceptions and practice of teachers in creating positive online teaching environment. Finally, one-way ANOVA test was run to observe whether there is a significant difference in teachers' perceptions in terms of these variables. The results indicate that there is a moderately positive correlation between EFL teachers' self-reported perceptions and their self-reported practices of positive classroom environment. While a statistically significant difference was recorded in terms of gender variable, no significant difference was observed in terms of the class size and teaching experience in EFL teachers perceptions of positive classroom environment.