Iranian EAP Teachers’ Professional Identity Construction in Online Teaching: Supporting and Hindering Factors

While research on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has extensively grown, little is known about EAP teachers’ professional work. The literature on EAP teachers is more under-developed in terms of their identity construction. The present study aims to fill this research gap and contribute to the EAP teacher education literature by discovering the factors that support or hinder EAP teachers’ professional identity in an online environment. To fulfill this purpose, 20 Iranian EAP teachers were interviewed and thematic analysis was conducted to extract the main codes and themes. The results showed the role of various personal, institutional, and sociocultural factors in EAP teacher professional identity construction in online contexts including global, societal, institutional, classroom and individual factors. While the status of English as the language of science dissemination is considered by teachers as a facilitating factor for EAP teachers’ identity construction, the status of EAP is not established in academia which hinders EAP teachers’ identity. The limitations of online tools and teaching platforms is a major source of hindering EAP teachers’ effective identity construction, which could be reduced with technology support provision by university managers. The findings may promise implications for EAP teacher educators in online contexts and offer suggestions for future research.