Exploring EFL Student Motivation and Attitudes Toward Student-Centered Pedagogy and Assessment Practices: The EFL Classroom Instruction Efficacy in Context

Abstract

Classroom instructions are greatly influenced by student motivation and attitudes toward the activities employed during the teaching and learning processes, and pedagogy and assessment practices draw no exception. The study aimed to explore learners’ motivation and attitudes toward teachers’ employment of the practices focused on student-centered pedagogy and assessment in the EFL classroom. In addition, it correlated the participants’ responses with their gender and specialization. The descriptive-survey approach was used to achieve the study objectives. The study tools, a questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview were applied to a stratified sample of 200 participants. The results showed that the study sample had high motivation and attitudes toward teachers’ employment of pedagogy and assessment practices focused on students. Besides, the variables of gender and specialization did not influence the respondents’ answers to the questionnaire. Finally, the analysis of the participants’ answers in the semi-structured interview showed that half of the interviewees approved of their experience of student-centered pedagogy and assessment practices in terms of engagement, advantages, and less pressure.