Abstract:
A recent reform in Iran’s education system has positioned English as the language for communication with the world. Following the reform, the English textbooks at schools significantly changed, and the teachers were required to implement communicative teaching approaches while teaching the new texts. The latest reports from the education system (Taherifard, 2016; Raeiszadeh, 2015) and the literature (Memari, 2013) showed that teachers have mostly resisted changing their teaching, and largely relied on grammar-based teaching approaches. This ethnographic case study investigated these teachers’ teaching while they were employing a communicative-oriented language teaching. In particular, this research examined three teachers’ task-based language teaching (TBLT) practices while the teachers were involved in collaborative efforts to transform their current practices into new models of activity during a short intervention. The study was conducted in one junior high school in a large city in Iran. Data was collected from the teachers through class/participant observations and individual/focus-group interviews during a summer school course. Engestrom’s third generation Activity Theory model was used as a theoretical and analytical framework. This presentation will report on the tensions, theoretically called ‘contradictions’, in the teachers’ teaching during the implementation of TBLT. There will be a focus on contradictions type one, two and three which were identified in these teachers’ teaching and which were the main driving force behind the teachers’ efforts for the transformation of their current teaching practices. Findings from this study can inform the policy and practices in the education system of Iran and other similar reformed contexts to invest on professional learning programmes that can involve teachers in efforts to renovate their existing teaching practices.