Iranian EFL Teachers’ Awareness of Dialogic Inquiry Approach to Language Teaching: A Case Study on Changing Teachers’ Practice from Monologic into Dialogic

Document Type : research article

Authors

Department of English, Shahreza Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahreza, Iran

Abstract

This mixed-methods study focused on measuring Iranian EFL teachers’ awareness of the dialogic inquiry approach and investigating the influence of the awareness of the approach on changing teachers’ classroom practices into dialogic practices.  The study included two phases. For the first phase of the study, a researcher-made questionnaire was designed with a 5-point Likert Scale. A purposive sampling method was applied to select 150 EFL teachers in Fars Province, Iran. The results pointed out that EFL teachers’ awareness was not sufficient to practice the approach in their classes. In the second phase, three EFL teachers participated in an in-service course to increase their awareness of the dialogic inquiry approach. Afterwards, five video-recorded sessions of a 20-session term were observed. The data were utilized to score Joyce and Showers’ (2002) Levels of Transfer Scale for each teacher to identify if they changed their practice into dialogic practice. To triangulate the data, in-depth interview sessions were conducted. In order to investigate the amount of dialogic stance of their practice, the Dialogic Inquiry Tool (D-I-T) teachers’ rubric was applied. The results showed that teachers’ awareness of the approach positively influenced the teachers’ practice to shift from monologic to dialogic. However, the teachers and their learners faced some challenges and problems in the first phases of applying the approach.

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References

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Journal of Foreign Language Research
Volume 15, Issue 4
December 2025
Pages 403-423

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