INVESTIGATING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DIMENSIONS INFLUENCING COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING AND TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION: A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF AFGHAN EFL UNIVERSITY TEACHERS

Abstract

Professional development (PD) is widely recognized as a critical mechanism for improving teaching quality in higher education; however, existing research often conceptualizes PD as a unified construct, offering limited insight into how specific PD dimensions shape particular pedagogical approaches. This study examines the differential effects of professional development dimensions—pedagogical training, language proficiency enhancement, technology integration, reflective practice, and peer collaboration—on communicative and student-centered English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching practices in Afghan universities. Grounded in Desimone’s professional development framework and communicative language teaching theory, the study adopts a quantitative research design. Data were collected from university EFL teachers and analyzed using SPSS Version 26 through descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and multiple regression techniques. The findings indicate that pedagogical training and language proficiency enhancement are the strongest predictors of communicative and student-centered pedagogy, while reflective practice and peer collaboration provide essential supportive conditions for pedagogical change. Technology integration, although positively associated with instructional practices, demonstrates comparatively weaker predictive power. The study contributes to EFL teacher education literature by offering a disaggregated, mechanism-oriented understanding of professional development and provides evidence-based guidance for designing targeted professional development initiatives in fragile higher education contexts.