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

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.