Teacher identified factors affecting the implementation of an EFL innovation in Greek public secondary schools

Abstract Research into classrooms has shown that curriculum innovations are rarely implemented as intended, with teachers either rejecting the innovation outright or professing to have changed their practices but in reality carrying on as before. Factors that have been suggested to affect implementation of innovations include the quality and quantity of teacher training, teachers’ attitudes towards the innovation, teachers’ understanding of the innovation, and teachers’ judgements of the feasibility and practicality of the innovation. In an effort to understand the causes of the non‐implementation of a Greek English language teaching innovation, 14 teachers were interviewed during the ‘post‐implementation’ phase of the innovation. This paper focuses on the factors that the teachers, through the interviews, identified as responsible for their non‐implementation of the Greek EFL innovation. It is argued that knowledge of these factors could assist not only in the improvement of the Greek EFL innovation but may also provide a guiding framework for the development and evaluation of language teaching innovations more generally.