addressing intercultural communicative competence in efl educational context: perceptions of iranian university instructors and school teachers

In recent years, much has been written on the significance of addressing and developing intercultural communicative competence in efl educational contexts. however, little attention has been paid to how micro-level stakeholders of a given educational system react to and perceive this emerging concept. the present study, therefore, was launched to investigate school teachers’ and university instructors’ perceptions regarding a. the cultural aspects of language teaching, b. the importance of intercultural communicative competence, c. the cultural topics to teach in the classroom, d. the time allocated to the cultural aspects of language, and e. the techniques used to teach culture. in so doing, a brief review of the related literature along with a content-based analysis of the curriculum was conducted. thereafter, a questionnaire was developed and employed to collect data from the participants, 157 school teachers and 52 university instructors from different provinces in iran. the results revealed the participants’ willingness to engage in culture teaching. nonetheless, some obstacles were reported to be in the way of full engagement in conducting inter-culturally communicative activities in the classrooms, namely the tight syllabi to be followed, highly exam-driven nature of the curricula, and lack of cultural awareness on the part of the school teachers. the theoretical and practical implications of the study were finally discussed.