Abstract

The primary focus of this study is to determine and compare Iranian students’ perceptions of their English teachers’ power in high schools, universities, and English language institutes. The research employed French & Raven’s (1959) framework of relational power bases (i.e., coercive, reward, expert, legitimate, and referent power) for understanding teachers’ power in this classroom. To this end, Teacher Power Use Scale (TPUS, Schrodt, Witt, & Turman, 2007) was translated to Persian and piloted among 150 students in all three educational contexts. After estimating reliability of Persian adaptation in the pilot study, 450 volunteer students responded to TPUS in the main study. For reliability studies, Cronbach Alpha and for validity studies, exploratory factor analysis were estimated.

Also, this study aimed to find out whether there are any other kinds of teachers’ power in educational contexts except what were represented by French & Raven’s (1959). For this purpose, the study used observation and interview.

The final results basically supported both French & Raven’s (1959) framework of relational power and also the original TPUS. Further, the findings suggested students’ perception of other kinds of teachers’ power beyond what was represented in the previous researches.

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