Jordanian Teachers' Language Proficiency, and Experiential Knowledge and Their Relationship to Teachers' Classroom Practices
Oqlah M. Smadi, Abeer al-Ghazo

Abstract
This study aimed at exploring Jordanian public school teachers’ language proficiency and their experiential knowledge and the relationship between these two variables and their classroom practices. The participants of the study were twenty female teachers of the English language. They were purposefully chosen from the schools in Ajloun Directorate of Education in the second semester of the academic year 2011/2012. To answer the questions of the study, the researchers designed an interview form that has structured questions, and adopted the paper version of the TOEFL and an observation checklist. Proper statistical analyses were used to analyze the results. The results of the study showed that the teachers' level of language proficiency was low. Majority of the teachers did not progress to transfer the received knowledge (acquired through the training programs) into their classrooms. The most important reasons behind the teachers' participation in the training programs related to teachers' attitudes toward professional development, the content and the process factors in the training programs, the clarity and possibility of achieving the curriculum outcomes (the influence of training programs on the teaching process), teachers' and students' benefits from the training programs, and teachers' motivation toward attending the training programs. The results also showed that the teachers' actual pedagogical competence was moderate with a mean of 2.736. The correlation coefficient between the teachers' linguistic competence and their classroom practices was positive and high with a mean of 0.71,and there was a negative significant correlation between the teachers' experiential knowledge and their pedagogical competence at α=0.05 with a very low coefficient correlation of - 0.51. This indicated that the teachers were not aware of the significance of the professional development and so they had a negative orientation towards the training programs they participated in.

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