Change has never been easy in the field of education. Most of the attempts taken failed, yet the reasons behind the failure were more complex than being simply ill-advised or inadequate. On the contrary, the failure stemmed from the fact that change is challenging and even with a strong leadership and financial support, it generally encounters a great exposed or silent resistance in an educational organization (Schroth, 2023). Resistance to change can be defined as a combination of individual reactions against the obstruction of powerful group forces (Coch & French, 1948). The term frequently refers to resistance to organizational change and it is generally used as an excuse for the failure of the changes made regarding technology, management practices, and production methods (Oreg, 2006).

The very same resistance could be observed in higher education institutions (HEI) due to advancements in technology, globalization, competition among HEIs, and accountability of HEI (Nair, 2003). According to Clark (1987), HEI have their small worlds, which can be inferred as they have subcultures. Therefore, it can be stated that higher education (HE) is unique in terms of resistance to change. The resistance is likely to occur based on a number of unique factors related with the culture of HEI regardless of the fact that the change is mandated or not (Chandler, 2010). The reasons behind the resistance to organisational change are lack of involvement in decision-making processes (Avidov-Ungar & Eshet-Alkalai, 2011), personal and contextual reasons (Oreg, 2006). Furthermore, unclear system goals, isolation in the classroom, and range in teaching skills impede changes in education (Guthrie, 2011).

The purpose of this study is to explore teacher resistance to organisational change at preparatory schools at tertiary level by clarifying whether working at state or private universities and teaching experience can predict the level of resistance to change. To achieve this, the following research questions are asked in the study:

1. Is there a significant difference between EFL instructors' resistance to change depending on their working place (state vs. private universities)?

2. Does teaching experience predict EFL instructors' resistance to change?

3. How do EFL instructors perceive their resistance to organisational change? 

4. What results emerge from merging the quantitative data on differences in EFL   instructors' resistance to change based on their workplace (state vs. private universities), and the predictive role of teaching experience with the qualitative data on their perceptions of resistance to change?

A mixed methods study with an explanatory mixed methods design (Creswell & Clark, 2017) was adopted. Initially quantitative methods were used to investigate the difference between EFL instructors’ resistance to change based on their workplace and teaching experience which will be qualitatively explored afterwards. For the initial quantitative part of the study, data was collected employing cluster sampling which enables the selection of a specific number of schools to collect data (Cohen et al., 2018) from 20 preparatory schools of universities in Ankara, Turkiye. Seven of these universities are state universities and thirteen of them are foundation or private universities. 171 EFL instructors answered the Change Attitude Scale developed by Oreg (2006). The second part of the study is based on phenomenology to have a deeper understanding of the results of the scale and how EFL instructors perceive the relation between resistance to organizational change. The qualitative data of the study is collected via purposeful sampling. As suggested by Creswell and Clark (2017) for explanatory mixed methods research, qualitative data was collected from the very sample who completed the survey of the study. According to Onwuegbuzie and Collins (2007), it is called nested samples and it refers to integrating the same participants who are the subsets of another sample into the current sampling. 10 semi-structured interview questions were answered by 15 EFL instructors. Qualitative data was analyzed via thematic analysis based on the steps developed by Braun and Clarke (2006). The ethical approval of the study was received on 13th March, 2024 from the Ethical Committee of Middle East Technical University.

The quantitative part of the study aimed to investigate the difference between EFL instructors’ resistance to change based on their workplace. Initially, data was checked for normality, outliers, and homogeneity of variances (Field, 2013). All the assumptions were met except normality. Thus, the Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test was conducted to compare means in a non-parametric way using R (R Core Team, 2021). It was observed that there is a statistically significant difference between groups regarding their working place (W=2363.5, p=0.01). Following that, Dunn’s post-hoc test was employed using the FSA package (Ogle et al., 2021), and a significant difference between higher resistance to change in private university instructors was revealed (Z=-2.45, p=0.01). Secondly, it was aimed to examine whether teaching experience predicts EFL instructors' resistance to change. In that, linearity, independence of errors, homoscedasticity, normality of errors, and multicollinearity assumptions were checked. Linearity and normality of errors were violated. Thus, it was decided to employ polynomial regression using R (R Core Team, 2021). The results revealed no significant relationship between teaching experience (including linear and quadratic terms) and resistance to change, F(2,117)=0.69, p=.502. The model explained negligible variance in resistance to change (Adjusted R²=-0.01). The polynomial regression model indicated (β=−1.65, SE=11.37, t=−0.15, p=.89) for the linear term, and (β=13.28, SE=11.37, t=1.17, p=.25) for quadratic term. Therefore, the results indicated that teaching experience does not significantly predict EFL instructors' resistance to change. Due to the nature of sequential design, a qualitative part will be conducted considering quantitative results. The qualitative part aims to reveal the possible reasons that may affect EFL instructors of private universities with higher resistance to change and their perception regarding experience. Finally, the results from quantitative and qualitative analysis will be merged and interpreted together to draw a comprehensive conclusion.

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