EFL Teacher Educators’ Perceptions of Inquiry-based Pedagogy: A Glance through Its Prerequisites and Challenges

Teacher educators play a seminal role in charting a clear roadmap and shedding light on a prosperous pedagogical journey for novice teachers. Though professional development programs today act as a proper springboard for scaffolding the incomplete knowledge of fledgling teachers, there seems to be a dire need for expanding the scope of such in-service programs to include more elements of successful teaching such as Inquiry-Based Pedagogy (IBP). Driven mainly by this aspiration, the current study strove to explore the teacher educators’ perceptions of IBP, considering the role and importance of inquiry in EFL instruction as well as the challenges that impede the practices of IBP. To conduct the study, 100 EFL teacher-educators from three Farhangian Universities in Iran were chosen through cluster random sampling. A 40-item questionnaire and a 10-item interview protocol were the instruments utilized for data collection. Data analysis via NVivo program, Factor Analysis, and multivariate analysis revealed teacher educators’ positive perceptions of IBP. The findings offer useful implications for curriculum designers, EFL teachers, and teacher educators, particularly as regards the integration of IBP into education.