Roots and Consequences of Teacher Isolation: A Data‐Driven Study of Language Teachers' Perceptions in an EFL Context

Abstract

The comparative effect of teaching in isolation or collaboration with others has been extensively explored. Still, more often than not, these studies are theory‐driven and, as such, give teachers' perspectives very little voice. While recent scholarship has begun to explore teacher isolation more comprehensively (Flores 2020), this data‐driven study aims to fill remaining gaps by exploring the roots and consequences of teacher isolation from the bottom up. To this end, 15 language teachers working in private language schools in Shahrood, a major city in Semnan Province, Iran, were purposively sampled, and their concerns and perspectives were collected and conceptualized in line with grounded theory (Corbin and Strauss 2008). Iterative data collection and analysis yielded language teacher isolation as the core category, related to factors such as tight schedules, a lack of shared concerns with other teachers, a judgmental workplace atmosphere, overwork, and egotism. The consequences of teaching in isolation were the routinization of practice and the atrophy of language‐teaching skills. These findings have clear implications for school principals, practitioners, and teachers.