EFL teacher education

ELT has recently witnessed a shift away from a method-bound orientation and toward a post-methodic view of teaching English. Consequently, the focus of some second language teacher education programs has shifted toward sociopolitical aspects of ELT (Miller, 2004) and its contributions to reinforcement or transformation of the status quo (Kumaravadivelu, 2003a). Yet, in many countries, including Iran, ELT teacher education has maintained a relatively method-bound focus on technical dimensions of teaching English and has avoided adopting a critical and sociopolitical approach to ELT. In order to investigate the ways in which teacher education as currently practiced facilitates or stifles implementation of postmethod in ELT, the present study explored English teachers’ perceptions of the dominant approaches to teacher education in ELT centers in Iran and their ideological and pedagogical bases. To this end, 23 language teachers were interviewed about the logistics, content, and procedures of the teacher education programs they had attended. The analysis of the interviews, as directed by grounded theory, yielded three themes, namely no/little teacher learners’ involvement in course design and implementation, dominance of a transmission model, and dominance of a linguistic and technical focus

Using Critical Digital Pedagogy (CDP) considering the recent technological advancements in the field of education as well as the prevalence of critical pedagogy (CP) in the World educational systems. This qualitative study aimed to uncover ELT experts’ and English literature teachers’ perceptions of a technology-laden CP-based EFL teacher preparation program for the context of Iran within a basic interpretive design. A total of thirty male and female ELT experts with a PhD in TEFL who were selected through convenience sampling from among experienced university professors who had relevant research expertise in the field. They were university professors with PhD in TEFL with different years of teaching experience. To collect the data, a semi-structured interview was used. Data analysis was done by the MAXQDA. The results showed that the perceptions of ELT experts and English literature teachers were both in line with the tenets of CP and the use of technology in education. Further, it was indicated that the perceptions of ELT experts and English literature teachers of a technology-laden CP-based EFL teacher preparation program for the context of Iran were significantly different. The findings have some implications for EFL teacher education administrators, curriculum planners and educators. Key Words: Critical Pedagogy (CP), Critical Digital Pedagogy (CDP), EFL Teacher Education, Technology.

Despite the widely recognized significance of values education in a rapidly changing world and teachers’ education-related beliefs, little research has investigated how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers navigate values in their classrooms. The study reported in this paper explored in-service EFL teachers’ perceptions of values education and their conceptions of their moral roles, aiming to develop an instrument related to values education. To this end, this exploratory sequential mixed-methods study recruited 10 EFL teachers selected through maximum variation sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teacher participants and the data were analyzed inductively through thematic analysis. Furthermore, the existing literature and the insights gleaned from the initial phase of the study led to the development of a questionnaire, which was administered to 332 EFL teachers in the quantitative phase of the study. Six overarching themes were identified through thematic analysis of the interview data, namely relational values, personal growth, academic excellence, regulatory values, teachers’ personal standards and global values with teachers prioritizing students’ motivation and wellbeing over other value types. In addition, confirmatory factor analysis of the developed questionnaire verified a five-factor structure. Only 23 items out of 53 initial items were retained in the final version of the questionnaire. Overall, the results revealed that master obligation of teachers, associated with nurturing students’ dignity was prioritized over teachers’ prima facie obligation which promotes students’ learning and intellectual growth. After a detailed discussion, implications and suggestions for future research are presented in the end.