Exploring the Relationship among EFL Teachers' Critical Thinking, Autonomy and Experience in Public and Private Schools

The main purpose of the study was to explore the connection between teachers' critical thinking, autonomy, and their teaching experience among public and private English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers. In addition, the differences between the two main contexts of English language learning (public and private contexts) were scrutinized vis a vis teachers' critical thinking and their autonomy. Two different groups of EFL private language institute teachers and EFL high school teachers were selected from two major cities in Khorasan Razavi, Iran. As the results of Path Analysis indicated, all subfactors of EFL teachers' critical thinking (analysis, evaluation, inference, inductive reasoning) except deductive reasoning were positive significant predictors of their autonomy. Additionally, the experience was a positive significant predictor of their autonomy. Furthermore, among five sub-factors of EFL teachers' critical thinking, four subfactors were predicted by experience including analysis, inference, inductive reasoning, and deductive reasoning. However, the experience did not predict evaluation. Also, the results of the Pearson correlation indicated that critical thinking was positively associated with autonomy with a moderate connection, and positively and weakly with experience. Furthermore, the results of the t-test for independent samples indicated that there was a significant difference between the two different contexts in the level of autonomy with private EFL teachers being more autonomous than public EFL teachers. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference between the two types of context in critical thinking.