Post-method Pedagogy in EFL Context: Does It Minimize Teachers’ Burnout?

Abstract

Historically the field of language teaching has been under rigorous changes through time. The inefficiency of language teaching methods in fulfilling the needs of all types of learners led to “Death of Method†(Allwright, 2003). Questioning the concept of method and its nature, Kumaravadivelu (1994) introduced “Post method†era. However, in Iran educational context EFL teachers are not fully aware of this concept or even implement its basics in their teaching if possible. On the other hand, teacher burnout (a state of physical and emotional exhaustion emerging from work conditions) is directly related to the quality of teaching and also is effective in the learners’ and consequently teachers' performance. So, this study tries to investigate the relationship between post-method implementation and teachers’ burnout and also, the teachers’ level of willingness and conformity to the principles of post-method pedagogy. To this aim, Iranian EFL teachers completed post-method pedagogy and burnout inventories. The results of Pearson Correlational analysis revealed that post-method is negatively correlated with burnout implying that involvement in post-method pedagogy is associated with less burnout. The results also determined that Post-method pedagogy was not highly applied in teachers’ performance in the classroom.