‘He or She?’ Examining Cultural Influences on Iranian Language Learners’ Perceptions of Teacher Efficacy

Abstract

This chapter aims to extend our understanding of cultural perspectives on gender in relation to perceptions of effective language teachers by examining how learners view male and female teachers and how these views compare with those of the teachers. Language learners are sometimes asked about good teachers, but they are rarely asked about their views of the efficacy of their male teachers compared with that of female ones — and for a number of reasons. This is an even rarer question, at least in public, when it concerns teachers’ evaluation of their colleagues of the opposite sex. Many studies have focused on the concept of teacher efficacy, in general, and some have examined the effect of learners’ genders, ages, and language proficiency on their perceptions of teacher efficacy, but few studies have compared teachers’ and language learners’ perceptions in this regard. An additional complexity is how gender perceptions might be affected by the cultural setting in which teachers work: There is a need to understand how learners’ views of effective teachers are influenced by their context of learning, especially when it comes to the gender of the teacher in a gender-sensitive society such as that of Iran. Here, we first provide a brief outline of English language teaching (ELT) and considerations of gender in education in Iran, then focus on gender perceptions of both teachers and learners of English.