Textbook dependency and teacher autonomy in EFL classes

Teaching materials are one of the important elements of the EFL teaching process. In particular, textbooks are of particular importance as they are the most common and widely used teaching materials in EFL classes. The textbook dependency concept, which has been scarcely investigated in EFL, can be defined as the implementation of textbooks by teachers in in-class and extracurricular activities faithfully without making any modifications. Another important focus of the study is teacher autonomy, teachers' freedom to make decisions on matters related to their profession such as planning and management besides the implementation of education. The current study aimed to determine the dependency of EFL teachers to the textbooks and find out any possible relationship between textbook dependency and teacher autonomy. Participants were 250 EFL teachers (130 male and 120 females) who teach at different levels and at different types of institutions. Quantitative data were collected through two different data collection tools, namely the Coursebook Dependency Questionnaire and the Teacher Autonomy Scale. Qualitative data collection was done with a semi-structured interview protocol with 5 EFL teachers. The results of the independent samples t-test analysis showed that male and female participants did not differ in terms of their Coursebook Dependency Questionnaire and Teacher Autonomy Scale scores. On the other hand, one way Anova tests showed that teachers in 0-10 group had statistically higher means of the Coursebook Dependency Questionnaire than 20+ year experience group. Another Anova test was conducted for difference among teaching experience groups and results showed there was not a statistically significant difference among the participants. A Pearson Correlation test was done to find out any possible relationships between the means scores of the Coursebook Dependency Questionnaire and the Teacher Autonomy Scale. The results illustrated that there was a negative statistically significant correlation between these two concepts. Qualitative analysis of the semi-structured interview data showed that teachers perceived two main considerations for the relationship between textbook dependency and teacher autonomy, namely formal consideration and high stakes tests.