African Educational Research Journal - Vol. 12(3) - From national to international: Teacher experiences in diverse Turkish classrooms

Oct 15, 2026

Sudden growth of international student numbers in once-monolingual EFL classrooms in Türkiye creates new challenges and opportunities for English as a Foreign Language instructors, requiring culturally diverse classroom approaches and reshaping in-class practices. This qualitative descriptive study gathers data from individual face-to-face interviews and survey results from eight experienced EFL instructors at a Turkish private university’s English preparatory program in fall 2022–2023. Findings from manual thematic analysis group challenges and opportunities into cultural, pedagogical, and social issues, aligned with related literature, and support designing professional development to strengthen Turkish EFL teachers’ intercultural awareness.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Internationalization and classroom change

Turkey’s context and student mobility

Growth of international students in private universities (tables)

Research setting data (tables)

African Educational Research Journal Vol. 12(3), pp. 202-209, August 2024 DOI: 10. 30918/AERJ.123.24.043 ISSN: 2354-2160 Full Length Research Paper From national to international: Teacher experiences in diverse Turkish classrooms Meryem Büşra ÜNSAL 1Modern Languages Unit, Department of Foreign Languages, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf University, Türkiye. 2Department of English Language Teaching, Graduate School of Education, Bahçeşehir University, Türkiye. Accepted 19 August, 2024 | ABSTRACT
The sudden increase of numbers in terms of international students in once-monolingual EFL classrooms in Türkiye brought new challenges and opportunities for English as Foreign Language (EFL) instructors to adapt more culturally diverse setting-friendly approaches and methods in class instantly, which inevitably caused shifts and highlights on in-class practices as well. For this qualitative descriptive study, the data was collected from individual face-to-face interviews and survey results from eight experienced EFL instructors working ata Turkish private university’s English preparatory program in the fall semester of the academic year of 2022- 2023, focusing on highlighting the challenges and opportunities of teaching in multicultural classrooms. In conjunction with that, teachers’ experiences with multicultural students were highlighted in teaching such interculturally and linguistically diverse settings. Following the manual thematic analysis of the data, results were grouped under three categories such as cultural, pedagogical and social issues regarding teaching in intercultural classrooms and presented in accordance with the relevant literature review which is in line with the results of this study. This paper contributes to this relatively new area of research as being one of the initial studies focusing on tertiary-level EFL instructors’ experiences of teaching in multicultural classroom settings and their experiences rather than beliefs while teaching in such classrooms, and it can help to pave the way to design professional development activities which is crucial regarding aiming at improving Turkish EFL teachers’ intercultural awareness in the classroom.
Keywords: International classroom, diversity, English language teaching, Turkish EFL teachers, multicultural education. | | --- | | *Corresponding [author. E-mail: mbunsal@fsm. edu.tr](author. E-mail: mbunsal@fsm. edu.tr). | INTRODUCTION The World gets smaller as the borders fade with physical and virtual exchange of individuals seeking new settings where a better or simply different living or education is available. When the numbers of individuals from other countries rise dramatically, the residents of those “new settings” are left with no choice but to adapt to their new norms with the inclusion of various people with different social and cultural backgrounds. Even though the orientation of newcomers is more popular, the perceptions and experiences of individuals who welcome diversity are as important as the orientation of the newcomers. “During the past century, the world has become considerably smaller not only through the effects of the media– McLuhan’s focus– but also through science, transportation, the Internet, migration, and the spread of global commerce” (Snyder and Wenger, 2010, 107) . One of the groups that are directly affected by the internationalization of the local settings is, without a doubt, educators- teachers, university lecturers and academics in the area of education. To be more specific, the rapid increase of international students in English language classrooms and its impact on education indifferent parts of the world as well as English-speaking countries has attracted the attention of educational researchers worldwide for more than two decades (McAllister and Irvine , 2002; Parker and Bickmore, 2012; Hachfield et al. , 2015; Spotti and Kroon, 2017; Mubaraq et al. , 2019) . The geographical, cultural, economic, and historical

FAQs

What teaching challenges and opportunities does the study focus on?

The study highlights challenges and opportunities of teaching in multicultural, intercultural, and linguistically diverse EFL classrooms, focusing on teachers’ classroom experiences.

How was the study data collected and from whom?

Data were collected through individual face-to-face interviews and survey results from eight experienced EFL instructors working in a Turkish private university’s English preparatory program.

What categories do the research findings fall into?

Results are grouped into three categories: cultural, pedagogical, and social issues related to teaching in intercultural classrooms.

Oct 15, 2026

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