The Turkish EFL Teacher Profile: Insights into Personality, Mindfulness, Classroom Management Anxiety, and Instructional Methods

This study aimed to examine the personality traits, English language teaching methods, classroom management anxiety, and mindfulness levels of Turkish English as foreign language teachers to represent their profiles by adopting a whole teacher approach. This descriptive study followed a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design, including both qualitative and quantitative methods. Accordingly, the Big Five Inventory, Classroom Management Anxiety Scale, Language Teaching Methods Scale, and Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory were applied to 400 participants from different teaching contexts. Following this, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 participants. The results showed that Turkish EFL teachers were mostly agreeable, preferred active teaching methods, had high levels of classroom management anxiety, and were moderately mindful. Based on the inferential analyses, while the male teachers were more mindful, the female teachers who were found to be more neurotic preferred to use active teaching methods more. The findings suggest the need for targeted support in classroom management anxiety and mindfulness training for teachers. The gender differences highlight the importance of personalized professional development to address teachers' unique needs and improve overall teaching effectiveness. Since the teachers who were willing to participate in projects were more extravert and preferred active teaching methods more, project participation should be encouraged.