Linguistic-Bound or Life-Wise Language Teaching Beliefs: A Mixed Methods Approach

摘要

Learning life skills is a fruitful practice that helps individuals to deal effectively with the everyday challenges of life. Although the attitudes in literacy education have shifted somewhat toward life-wise instruction for three decades (Oxenham et al. 2002), it seems that the unique potentials of English language classes for enhancing learners' life qualities have mostly been ignored in English literacy education. In the present study, the authors used an explanatory mixed methods research design to examine Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' life-wise language teaching beliefs. The first phase involved the collection of quantitative data via the administration of the Life-Responsive Language Teaching Beliefs Questionnaire to Iranian EFL teachers (N = 192). Analysis of the questionnaire results revealed that among the four underlying factors of life-responsive language teaching (i.e. Life-wise Empowerment, Adaptability Enhancement, Pro-social Development and Life-over-language Preference) teachers tended to underscore the pro-social development of language learners above others. Follow-up face-to-face interviews were carried out with a subsample (N = 7) selected from Phase 1 participants. These interviews were used to identify the types of linguistic-bound or life-responsive teaching practices that L2 teachers experienced. Having added more plausibility to the quantitative results from phase 1, the follow-up qualitative phase uncovered few disparities among L2 teachers regarding the aspects of linguistic-bound or life-responsive language teaching. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.