An investigation of the role of gender in resilience and attitude toward technology use among Iranian English teachers: A case of mainstream education

Background and Purpose: Technological tools are not effectively and regularly utilized by EFL instructors in their language teaching since not all of them are ready to employ technology despite its opportunities of assisting their pedagogical procedure. Consequently, exploring the instructors’ perceptions of the existing usefulness of technology in their language instruction setting is crucial. The present study set out to explore the associations between teachers’ attitudes toward the use of technology for instructional purposes, their gender, and resilience. Methodology: Through simple random sampling, the researcher selected 120 male and female Iranian EFL teachers with more than three years of teaching experience from different private language institutes. Two instruments were used to collect the data for a correlational design: The teacher resilience scale of Connor-Davidson (2003) and the attitude scale adopted from Cox et al. (1999). To compare the role of gender in terms of resilience and attitude, an independent samples t-test was carried out. Findings: The analysis of the data indicated a significant relationship between Iranian male and female EFL teachers’ resilience as well as attitude toward technology use. Further analysis of the study demonstrated females’ resilience scores were significantly higher than males’ resilience scores. On the other hand, male participants had a more significantly positive attitude toward technology use in EFL classes. Contributions: One of the study’s pedagogical implications was that the stakeholders need to notice resilience toward technology in pre- or in-service EFL teachers, give them supportive scaffolding, and help them enhance their resilience.