حسن سودمندافشار

Reflective Thinking is considered as one of the essential elements which can help learners facilitate the language learning process (Kember et al., 2000). Also, reflective teaching is regarded as a necessary characteristic of efficient teachers (Akbari, 2007). The present study aimed at investigating the Iranian EFL teachers' perceptions of their own reflective teaching, the inhibitors to their reflective teaching, the inhibitors to their students' reflective teaching, and the impact of teaching experience and academic degree on their reflective teaching perception. To this end, 304 EFL teachers from private language institutes mainly in Hamedan and Malayer took part in the study by completing ʻEnglish Language Teaching Reflection Inventoryʼ developed by Akbari, Behzadpoor, and Dadvand (2010), Inhibitors to EFL Teachers' Reflective Teaching Questionnaire and Inhibitors to EFL Learners' Reflective Teaching Questionnaire with the last two questionnaires being developed and validated by the researcher. Besides, 60 EFL teachers selected on a voluntary basis sat an interview. After collecting the required data, the results of descriptive statistics indicated that (1) Iranian EFL teachers had medium level of reflective teaching, (2) three types of inhibitors to EFL teachers' reflective teaching were found and classified under three categories of ʻlack of knowledge inhibitorsʼ, ʻaffective and emotional inhibitors’, and ʻlanguage teaching institute inhibitorsʼ, and (3) three types of inhibitors to EFL learners' reflective teaching were also found and classified under three categories of ʻaffective and emotional inhibitorsʼ, ʻcognitive inhibitorsʼ, and ʻlearning situation inhibitorsʼ. The results of two-way ANOVA indicated both academic degree and teaching experience significantly differential Iranian EFL teachers with respect to their reflective teaching perception, but the interaction of academic degree and teaching experience exerted no impact upon their perception of ref