An Exploration of Iranian Teachers’ Professional and Institutional Identities and their Enactment of Critical Pedagogy

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ professional and institutional identities, and their implementation of critical pedagogy. In order to address the research questions of this study, a mixed-method design was employed. Survey type approach and interview were used. Through convenience sampling, 121 EFL teachers from different private language institutes took part in the study by completing the professional identity questionnaire, the institutional Identity questionnaire, and the critical pedagogy implementation questionnaire. In the second phase of the study, for triangulating the data, 11 of the participants were interviewed. To analyze the data, Pearson product-moment correlation, multiple-regression, and qualitative content analyses were run. The obtained results pointed to the significant relationship both between EFL teachers’ institutional identity and their implementation of critical pedagogy, and EFL teachers’ professional identity and their implementation of critical pedagogy. Moreover, teachers’ institutional identity was found to be predictive of their implementation of critical pedagogy. The study’s findings have implications for teacher educators and language academies.