Teachers’ Perceptions, Experiences, and Challenges of Incorporating Justice in English as a Foreign Language Classrooms

Abstract

The present qualitative study sought to unravel English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ perceptions and experiences of classroom justice and injustice. By employing purposive sampling, 31 EFL teachers in Iran were targeted to respond to an open-ended questionnaire. Subsequently, five of them took part in a follow-up, semi-structured interview. All data analyses were conducted via MAXQDA software. The main findings of the study were as follows; (1) The procedural, interactional, and distributive justice dimensions emerged in the teachers’ accounts of justice and injustice; (2) classroom justice was highlighted more saliently in teachers’ accounts than classroom injustice; (3) the teachers mainly had positive evaluations of their justice practices; and (4) they regarded educational and institutional factors, student-related factors, and teacher-related factors as the three major sources of challenges faced by EFL teachers when enacting classroom justice. It is hoped that by unraveling and reflecting on their justice and injustice behaviors, EFL teachers be prompted to go for their instructional justice betterment and more skillfully handle daily challenges that they face when trying to act fairly in the classroom.