Teacher education programs can pursue the aim of helping teachers acquire the knowledge base for effective teaching. However, the representation of curricular knowledge, one of the important dimensions of the teacher knowledge base, varies across educational and sociocultural contexts. As this knowledge has rarely been explored in the context of Iran, the current study sought to analyze the contents of teacher education programs to identify the representation of curricular knowledge. For this aim, the programs of 15 English language institutes were analyzed using a checklist developed based on Roberts’ (1998) model. Totally, 12 general categories, including 59 components, were found in pre-service programs; however, only 4 categories and

Imagined communities of practice create spaces for language learners to participate in local and global interactions as individuals and as members of global communities. However, scant research has examined imagined communities of practice in the context of English as an international language (EIL). The present study adopted a mixed-methods design to explore English language learners’ perspectives on using English in the context of EIL. A total of 592 participants completed an Imagined Community of Practice Questionnaire, and 64 participated in semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire data were subjected to exploratory factor analysis, which identified four underlying factors, including constructing language learning identity, learn

Despite the global spread of English, it seems that voices from Persian-speaking teachers concerning English as an international language (EIL) teaching methods and materials are underrepresented. The present study set out to explore how nonnative Persian-speaking English language teachers respond to the increasing global dominance of EIL and native-and non-native-speakers’ language norms within the general paradigm of ELT. Questionnaires and interviews were used to explore 210 teachers’ beliefs about language teaching materials and methods in the context of EIL. Findings showed that the teachers noticed the need to expose English language learners to both native and nonnative varieties of English. Furthermore, the teachers acknowledged

Reflection is defined as “a thinking process which gives coherence to a situation which is initially incoherent and unclear”(Clar?, 2015, p. 263). As Farrell (2018a, 2018b) argues, teacher reflection is an essential component of many language teacher education programs worldwide as it can help teachers with a deeper understanding of their teaching, assessment of their professional growth, and development of informed decision-making skills. Due to the importance of this thinking process, reflection lies at the heart of continued professional development and the evaluation of good teaching in many frameworks including EAQUALS (Evaluation and Accreditation of Quality in Language Services)(see www. eaquals. org), the Cambridge English Teach

Teacher-others relationship is one of the main features of teacher identity. As an aspect of this relationship, in some educational contexts, teachers experience imposition in their work place. As there is no survey tool to measure imposed identity, the present study developed a questionnaire based on the relevant literature and interviews with 44 EFL teachers, resulting in a 45-item questionnaire which was disseminated among 450 EFL teachers. An exploratory factor analysis of responses of EFL teachers yielded eight factors, namely: (1) Instructional, assessment, and interpersonal expectations imposed by managers and Supervisors, (2) Teacher professional responsibilities expected by stakeholders in the institute and the family, (3) Restrict

This study used questionnaires and interviews to investigate Iranian English language teachers’ intercultural identity and its metaphoric realization in the context of cultural globalization. While questionnaire findings revealed that the majority held first language cultural identity, factor analysis indicated teachers’ preference for American culture as representative of globalized culture. Interview data indicated teachers’ imagined direct exposure to the global village through the media. Metaphoric analysis revealed the conceptualization of local culture as closed home, which was valued by anti-cultural globalization teachers as protection while devalued by pro-cultural globalization teachers as a limitation. These fi

Teachers have always been among the main stakeholders in language education. A review of the fads and fashions and the rise and fall of language teaching methods testifies to the varied roles assigned to language teachers. In the heyday of the methods era, ranging from the audiolingual method to Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), teachers constantly received attention depending on how teacher roles were defined in each method. These roles are well presented in two seminal volumes by Richards and Rodgers (2001) and Larsen-Freeman (2000). In the former, the authors describe three aspects of methods: approach, design, and procedure. In this model, teachers along with objectives, syllabus, learning activities, roles of learners, and materials

As one of the main components of communicative competence, pragmatic competence is the ability to use language appropriately in social interaction. One main component of pragmatic competence is the use of speech acts, which are acts such as requesting, apologizing, and thanking that speakers perform when making an utterance with regard to particular intentions and purposes. As such, the effective instruction of pragmatics, including speech acts and crosscultural variations in their realizations, is considered to be among the abilities that good language teachers should develop. This chapter aims to address the interface between pragmatics and good language teachers’ knowledge base and instructional practice. First, a model of the historic

The rise of world Englishes has challenged the emphasis on native-speaker accents and cultures in English language teaching. This study aimed to investigate the representation of world Englishes and cultures in three global language teaching textbooks, namely Interchange, English Result, and American English File. The textbooks were subjected to content analysis regarding their reference to Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circles’ varieties and their associated cultural contents. Kachru (The alchemy of English: The spread functions and models of non-native Englishes. Oxford: Pergamon, 1986) notion of Concentric Circles, and the categorization proposed by Pfister and Borzelli (Unterrichtspraxis 10:102–108, 1977) functioned as a framework to

The aim of this study was to develop a new typology of scaffolding grounded on a large classroom corpus of teacher talk. To this end, 45 hours of 15 language teachers' classroom instruction were recorded and transcribed. From the obtained data, a new typology is proposed with four major categories, namely meta‐scaffolding, linguistic scaffolding, affective scaffolding, and under‐scaffolding. These categories comprise a wide range of subcategories, including, inter alia, meta‐linguistic scaffolding, gestural scaffolding, resource providing, audiovisual organizers, reformulation, elicitation, echoing, and emotional scaffolding. Moreover, the data show that the classroom interactional pattern of Initiation/Response/Feedback (IRF) could b

Developing learners' pragmatic competence is claimed to be influenced by teachers' awareness of pragmatic instruction. However, this awareness and the way teachers teach pragmatics in their classrooms have been rarely explored. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the extent of English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' metapragmatic awareness and their instruction of pragmatic features. To achieve this goal, a 30-item questionnaire was adapted and administered to 300 EFL teachers and analyzed in terms of the four components of the questionnaire, including Language teachers, Language learners, Colleagues and institutes, and Coursebooks and exams. Moreover, the classes of 30 teachers were observed based on a 20-item observation che

Although decades of research have documented scaffolding in second language learning, providing scaffolding in content-based instruction (CBI) has remained under-explored. This qualitative study investigated teachers’ discursive scaffolding strategies and functions and L2 students’ reciprocity to teachers’ scaffolding in science CBI. Four teachers and 30 bilingual students were selected through convenience sampling from an international school. The audiotaped recordings of 24 hours of classroom instruction were transcribed and analyzed based on discursive scaffolding strategies (Walqui, 2006) and scaffolding functions (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). The deductive content analysis of data demonstrated that the most frequent scaffolding s