Non-Native EFL Teacher Educators’ Pedagogical Roles: Language Institute Managers’ Perceptions

The pedagogical roles of teacher educators (TEs) in recruiting and educating future language teachers have recently gained attention among teacher education researchers. As there is scant research on the perspectives of stakeholders on these roles, this study sought to investigate the pedagogical roles of Iranian non-native TEs in educating preservice and in-service EFL teachers from the viewpoint of language institute managers. To this end, following a qualitative research design, a total of 30 institute managers were selected via the snowball sampling method and invited for semi-structured interviews. The participants’ responses were audio recorded and subjected to thematic analysis to extract the main themes. The findings showed that institute managers assigned three key pedagogical roles to TEs: holding preservice/in-service teacher education courses, improving the assessment system, and designing effective language syllabuses. Language institute managers believed that effective TEs should not only be responsible for running teacher education courses but also engage in the evaluation process by designing and developing relevant instructional syllabuses in cooperation with educational managers of the institutes. The findings have implications for the professional development and practices of TEs.