Iranian Language Teachers’ Passion for the Profession: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

To explore Iranian professionally developed English teachers’ passion for the English language teaching profession, an interview with 7 open-ended questions was conducted to 14 Iranian professionally developed teachers to discover what factors were at work in their professional growth. Participants included 8 Ph.D. holders, 3 Ph.D. candidates, and 3 M.A. holders in TEFL who had more than 20 years of service in the Iranian context and were chosen by purposive sampling. After interviewing the participants via a standard interview and delving deeply into the emotional aspects of their professional journey throughout their lives, the following factors emerged from the analysis of the transcriptions of the interviews as reasons to have and sustain passion for language teaching profession: acceptance of change, cooperating with colleagues, being a model, establishing relationships, helping the students, meeting personal needs, contributing to the society, and love of learning/language.