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There is nowadays a burgeoning research base, mostly in mainstream education, acknowledging that teachers have the most important impact on students' achievement outcomes. This line of research, however, has not yet found its way into second language pedagogy and little, if any, empirical evidence exists on which set of EFL teacher characteristics promotes positive student learning outcomes. In line with this argument, the present study investigated three important teacher-related variables, i.e. teaching styles, teachers’ sense of efficacy, and teacher reflectivity to see how they relate to student achievement gains in ELT. 30 EFL teachers teaching in Ilam (Iran) high schools participated in this study. The final exam score of the participants' students served as the dependent variable of the study. The results of multiple regression analysis (R=.91) showed that the three variables investigated can significantly predict student achievement outcomes. Besides the R value, the results showed individual correlations between each pair of the variables which reveal interesting relationships. 

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Classical test theory and item response theory are widely perceived as representing two very different measurement frameworks. Few studies have empirically examined the similarities and differences in the parameters estimated using the two frameworks. The purpose of this study was to examine how item statistics (i.e. item difficulty and item discrimination) and person statistics (i.e. ability estimates) behave under the two measurement frameworks i.e.CTTandIRT. The researchers tried to compare the two models from both theoretical and practical perspectives. For this purpose, first, a theoretical comparison of the two models was carried out then, a sample of 3000 testees taking part in the English language university entrance exam was used in order to compare the two models practically. The findings showed that person statistics from CTT were comparable with those from IRT for all three IRT models. Item difficulty indexes from CTT were comparable with those from all IRT models and especially from the one-parameter logistic (1PL) model. Item discrimination indexes from CTT were somewhat less comparable with those from IRT.

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Performance assessment is exceedingly considered a key concept in teacher education programs worldwide. Accordingly, in Iran, a national assessment system was proposed by Farhangian University to assess the professional competencies of its ELT graduates. The concerns regarding the validity and authenticity of traditional measures of teachers' competencies have motivated us to devise a localized performance assessment scheme. Therefore, the present study aimed to develop a performance assessment scheme to be used as a benchmark for assessing the professional competencies of ELT graduates of this university. To this end, three assessment tasks and rating scales were developed, piloted, and administered. Next, Haertel's participatory approach was employed to set passing standards for the assessment tasks as well as the whole assessment scheme. Analysis of the data revealed inter-rater and intra-rater reliability coefficients of 0.85 and 0.89. The validity of the assessment scheme was also confirmed by experts' judgments made, to a large extent, on the correspondence between the target domain and test domain skills. Based on the results, the proposed assessment scheme is rendered more efficient and reliable in comparison to traditional tests with regard to the following dimensions: a) higher degrees of reliability and validity of the assessment scheme aimed at the improvement of licensure and program development; b) stronger evidence for inter-/intra- rater reliability and consistency of scoring; and c) an optimized and systematic procedure for setting passing standards based on the consensus of experts' judgments. It is believed that further development of the proposed assessment scheme unlocks its potential to be used as a large-scale teacher assessment model for Farhangian University.