Inside the Classroom Context: Socio-Cultural Factors which Influence Teachers’ Identity Formation in Iran

Culture and socio-cultural factors have been being always one of those discussible issues in terms of teaching a new language. EFL/ESL teachers face many challenges while teaching not only language and linguistic components but also socio-cultural points and their differences for the learners. To this, the present study offers an explanatory mixed-method research among ۳۱ participants who are EFL adult teachers in Iran, educated in English language, with Persian culture background and answered a questionnaire and an interview regarding teacher identity which was coded and analyzed by the researchers and showed the results and findings in order to answer the research question. The results indicated that although there are many teachers who tend to use L۱ more that L۲ or vice-versa, most of the teachers prefer to use both languages and socio-cultural samples. The answers of the questionnaire and interview showed the variety of socio-cultural variables that are effective in teachers’ identity formation.

Keywords:

Socio-Cultural Factors , Teachers’ Identity Formation , EFL Teachers , Iran