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چکیده
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Abstract Nearly 60 years after the initial declaration of language teachers’ knowledge, evidence still seems unsatisfactory as little is generally agreed upon of what exactly language teachers’ competency framework entails. Having this in mind, such deficiency is a powerful impediment to develop a reliable and valid scale to assess language teachers’ level of expertise. While intending to cover three objectives, the current study followed Noblit and Hare’s meta-ethnography approach including seven steps namely 1. Getting started, 2. Deciding what is relevant, 3. Reading the studies, 4. How studies are related to each other, 5.Translating studies into on another, 6. Synthesizing translations, and finally, 7. Expressing the synthesis to reconcile various researchers’ interpretations of language teacher’ knowledge through facilitating the accumulation of their substantive interpretations addressed within literature. To do so, a total number of 188 studies were chosen through meticulous search techniques as well as CASP quality criteria (Atkins et al., 2008). The result of the meta-ethnography yielded a reductionist yet inclusive account of language teachers’ literacy named Content and Educational Literacy Threshold (CELT) with a two-tire construct taxonomy: Content Literacy consisting of six subthemes namely Conceptual and Theoretical Literacy, Classroom Context Literacy, Curriculum and Material Development, Human Resources Literacy, Evaluation , Assessment and Research Literacy, and Educational Technology Literacy as well as Educational Literacy with four subthemes namely Teaching Skills and Strategies, Learner Treatment Skills, Management and Leadership, and Educational Technology Use Literacy. Then, in order to initiate the processes of scale development, an initial pool of items was created based on three major sources. One of the reliable sources which certainly appear to be superior in utility to the literature was provided by the results of an in-depth inspection of literature resulting in the accumulation of credible and related studies under the title of meta-synthesis analysis. Inspiring from the results of meta-synthesis, the other sources of item bank was researchers’ addition of further items to the gathered pool. Finally, a total number of 126 items were given to a group of experts to judge the relativity and accordance of the items which resulted to the total deletion of 35 items and a slight revision of 19 items. The remained 91 items were then given to a group of 437 Iranian EFL teachers for the purpose of performing meticulous procedures of explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis to come up with a reliable and valid scale. This led to a 79 item scale with acceptable reliability and validity indices. The developed instrument was reliable enough to assess literacy domain of EFL teachers. In the final step, the developed instrument which includes 79 items was actually administered to a group of 283 Iranian English language teachers. Overarching a framework for demonstrating the key findings of the available literature on ELT literacy, the findings of the study can be initially used in training educated teachers who are trustable enough to fulfill their role in a professional occupation by exceling the content of current teacher education programs. Additionally, many experts in the field including language teaching policy makers, curriculum designers, material developers, teachers and learners and other practitioners can benefit from having effortless access to the English language teachers’ literacy framework. At last but not least, prospective English language teachers can confidently and proudly claim to choose a professional occupation rather a profession which can offer a rich content to educate prospective teachers. Keywords: EFL teachers, Meta-synthesis, Meta- ethnography, Content and Educational Literacy Threshed Inventory, ELT Literacy, Knowledge domains, Synthetic approach
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