Nurturing multiculturalism in Iranian EFL teacher education: an in-depth scrutiny of experts’ and teachers’ perceptions

Abstract

Given that Iran is the host of a variety of cultures characterized with diverse languages, viewpoints, and customs, the empty place of multiculturalism in its ELT system is deeply felt. The present study sought to tackle multiculturalism in EFL teacher education in the context of Iran by exploring Iranian EFL experts’ and teachers’ perceptions. The participants of this study consisted of the two groups. The first group included 15 male and female multicultural education experts. The second group of the participants included of 60 (30 males and 30 females) Iranian EFL teachers. To collect the required data, a demographic information scale, two semi-structured interviews and an audio-reflective journal were used. Data analysis was done via qualitative thematic analysis by MAXQDA. As revealed by the results, several themes were extracted as the components of the multicultural EFL teacher education, as uncovered by the experts’ views some of which include Eliminating Race-Related Inequalities, Eliminating Gender-Related Inequalities, and Eliminating Social Class-Related Inequalities. Moreover, the Necessary Communicative Skills, Positive Thinking, Difference Acceptance, and Multicultural Content, Various Evaluation Methods were found as some of the extracted EFL teachers’ perceptions of multicultural EFL teacher education. The findings have some implications for different groups of stakeholders including EFL teachers, teacher educators and teacher education material developers who can take useful insights from the findings in teaching EFL, educating student-teachers and developing future curricula, respectively.