Abstract:
Grounded on Hofstede's (1986) dichotomous model of collectivism/individualism, this study explored Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' cultural identity. A sequential mixed methods procedure was adopted to examine their cultural orientation and the impact of length of experience on their degree of propensity to absorb the target language culture. A total of 120 female and male teachers of private English institutes with varying years of teaching record contributed to this research. Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Model was developed into a Likert-scale questionnaire, along with a number of complementary demographic questions. To gain a deeper understanding of the teachers' standpoints, six of the teachers were randomly selected to participate and elaborate on their responses, in a semi-structured interview. The analysis of the findings revealed that Iranian EFL teachers were primarily identified as being individualist, irrespective of the span of their professional experience. The finding tends to contradict Hofstede's survey where Iranians had been identified as collectivists as a whole. Even though career length did not statistically disclose the degree of the teachers’ cultural affiliation, their responses at the interview revealed some underlying trends accounting for their identity shifts. It seems to be the case that exposure to and contact with the English language covertly transformed non-native teachers' cultural identity over time. By extension, it may well be that foreign language teachers, apart from their indigenous cultural persuasions, seem to grow into the target culture to which they are exposed, without even being physically present in the target community environment.
Grounded on Hofstede's (1986) dichotomous model of collectivism/individualism, this study explored Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' cultural identity. A sequential mixed methods procedure was adopted to examine their cultural orientation and the impact of length of experience on their degree of propensity to absorb the target language culture. A total of 120 female and male teachers of private English institutes with varying years of teaching record contributed to this research. Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions model was developed into a Likert-scale questionnaire, along with a number of complementary demographic questions. To gain a deeper understanding of the teachers' standpoints, six of the teachers were randomly selected to participate, and elaborate on their responses, in a semi-structured interview. The analysis of the findings revealed that Iranian EFL teachers were primarily identified as being individualist, irrespective of the span of their professional experience. The finding tends to contradict Hofstede's survey where Iranians had been identified as collectivists as a whole. Even though career length did not statistically disclose their degree of cultural affiliation, teachers' responses at the interview revealed some underlying trends accounting for their identity shifts. It seems to be the case that exposure to and contact with the English language covertly transformed non-native teachers' cultural identity over time. By extension, it may well be that foreign language teachers apart from their indigenous cultural persuasions, seem to grow into the target culture they are exposed to, without even being physically present in the target community environment.
Machine summary:
However, in the post-modern perspective, informed by various considerations such as gender, ethnicity, religion, social context, sexual orientation, culture, and language, individuals are assumed to own a multifaceted and fluid identity (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004; Castells, 2010; Edwards, 2009; Joseph, 2004; Lemke, 2002; May, 2008; Owen, 2011).
In an ethnographic case study by Duff and Uchida (1997) on an adult EFL program at the Kansai Cross-Cultural Institute in one of the coastal cities of Japan, the lives of four teachers (two Japanese, two American) outside and inside of the classroom were subjected to scrutiny to understand the teachers’ multiple roles and identities as people who tackle English and culture in a socio-educational context.
In the current study, in addition to exploring Iranian EFL teachers' cultural affiliation based on Hofstede's dichotomous cultural model of collectivism/individualism, we investigated the effect of their teaching record (novice, less-experienced, and more experienced) on their cultural identity reconstruction in order to figure out which groups of teachers were mostly affected by target language culture in the course of their teaching practice.
RESULTS The first research question of this study asked whether Iranian EFL teachers are collectivist or individualist according to Hofstede's (1986) cultural dimensions model.
The obtained results on the attitudinal orientations of Iranian EFL teachers toward individualist tendencies are in keeping with a number of previous studies (Alshahrani, 2017; Dongmei & Xing, 2012; Viberg & Grönlund, 2013) who have utilized Hofstedes' (1986) framework in foreign language learning to investigate the impact of cultural factors.