Intercultural communicative competence beliefs and practices of Iranian pre-service and in-service EFL teachers

ABSTRACT

This study set out to evaluate Iranian EFL teachers’ Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) beliefs and practices. An ICC belief scale was developed drawing on Byram’s (1997) model of Intercultural Competence (IC) and Sercu’s (2005) EFL teachers’ opinion on Intercultural Foreign Language Teaching Questionnaire. To ensure the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, it was piloted on a group of 60 teachers and the obtained data were subjected to Factor Analysis and Cronbach α internal consistency measures. The validated questionnaire was administered to 100 pre-service teachers majoring in Applied Linguistics at M.A. level from six universities in Iran and 100 in-service M.A. holding teachers working in private language institutes. Moreover, 30 EFL teachers’ teaching practices were observed. The results revealed that pre and in-service teachers did not significantly differ in their ICC beliefs. Furthermore, the inexperienced, semi-experienced, and experienced EFL teachers did not differ in their ICC belief patterns. However, while EFL teachers believed in the necessity of the integration of ICC in their classroom practices, the observation results revealed that their ICC practices failed to correspond with their ICC beliefs. The findings suggest that teacher training programs and instructional experience mediate the development of theoretical dimensions of ICC but do not lead to the development of the required skills for the implementation of ICC in pedagogical practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural communicative competence
• EFL teachers
• belief
• teaching experience
• Iran

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Bu Ali Sina University.

Notes on contributors

Mohammad Ahmadi Safa

Mohammad Ahmadi Safa is associate professor of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at Bu Ali Sina University of Hamedan, Iran. His main fields of interest are sociocultural approaches in foreign or second language learning and teaching, language testing and assessment and Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP).

Somayeh Tofighi

Somayeh Tofighi is a TEFL Ph.D Candidate at Bu Ali Sina University of Hamedan, Iran.