Teacher Cognition and English as a Foreign Language Context: Potential Challenges

Abstract

This study tends to explore teachers', students', and administrators' perspectives of the contextual factors influencing teacher cognition in teaching English to university students in an EFL context in Saudi Arab. The Saudi EFL context is unique as most of the university teachers are international since there are not many qualified Saudi teachers in higher education. Teachers, here, face quite a challenging context. To explore the factors posing challenges to teacher cognition, employing sequential qualitative approach, data were collected by using semi-structured interviews. First, eight teachers, selected through purposeful sampling, were interviewed, which helped identify four major factors influencing teacher cognition viz., lack of societal support system, students’ negative attitude towards English, unconducive educational policies, and teacher efficacy. In order to embrace the phenomenon holistically, teachers’ interviews were triangulated with four students’ and administrators’ interviews each, selected through purposeful sampling. The three camps were found to have similar perspectives of the first three factors; however, students and administrators were at odds with the teachers about one of the factors‒teacher efficacy. The findings reveal that teacher cognition in an EFL context is challenged by factors such as the society, student demotivation, student attitude towards English, ill-planned educational policies, limited instruction time, over-crowded classrooms, assessment procedures, and teaching practices. The study eventually suggests recommendations and has implications for improved teacher cognition and better teaching and learning atmosphere in the EFL context.