The current study investigated Iranian EFL teachers’ Professional Development (PD) needs, the potential inhibitors to their PD and the possible effect of teaching experience and teaching qualification on their PD. The Likert-scale Iranian EFL Teachers’ PD Needs Inventory developed and validated by Soodmand Afshar, Fazelimania and Doosti (2017) was administered to 221 EFL teachers. Next, a 39-item five-point Likert-scale questionnaire called Iranian EFL Teachers’ PD Inhibitors questionnaire (IETPDIQ) was constructed by the researchers and subjected to expert judgment, pilot testing and factor analysis for validation purposes. The IETPDIQ was administered to the 221 participants of the study. The findings of descriptive statistics showed Iranian EFL teachers’ most pressing PD needs included improving their knowledge of critical pedagogy, reflective teaching, and actual teaching practice. The results of descriptive statistics also showed that the workplace institute factor (e.g., low institute payments, managerialism and institute managers’ not involving the teachers in decision-making processes, inefficient traditional PD activities like one-shot workshops by the institutes, etc.), and teachers themselves (e.g., teachers’ busy work schedule, demotivation, burn-out, etc.) were among the top inhibitors to Iranian EFL teachers’ PD. Moreover, the results of two separate one-way ANOVAs and two post-hoc Sheffe analyses indicated that teaching experience and teaching qualification significantly differentiated high-experienced, mid-experienced and low-experienced teachers and PhD-holders, MA-holders and BA-holders respectively with regard to PD.
