LOCAL EFL TEACHERS’ BELIEFS: A PRELIMINARY REPORT IN IRAN

The study of teachers’ beliefs is a contemporary inclination in language pedagogy and teacher education research with an outstanding outcome highlighting the influential role of teachers’ beliefs in determining their professional behavior. Given the paucity of studies on language teachers’ beliefs in unexplored EFL contexts particularly in Iran, this preliminary study examines the impacts of English and TEFL invoking the elicited real-life beliefs of 25 Kurdish EFL teachers of private language institutes in Ilam, in western Iran. A self-designed open-ended questionnaire along with an interview was administered to encourage teachers to spell out their beliefs and to obtain the required data. In light of qualitative-interpretative data analysis, the EFL teachers’ beliefs boiled down to six main groupings including (1) “My ways of communication” (2) “My personality” (3) “My native language, culture and identity” (4) “My worldview beliefs” (5) “My lifestyle” and (6) “Other”. These categories were illustrated and discussed to form a general agenda of Kurdish EFL teachers’ belief system. There were also recommendations for further studies exclusively for the design and development of EFL teacher education programs and courses in the region, in Iran and in a globalized context.