Viewing Emergency Remote Teaching Within a Pedagogical Framework: Voices from English as a Foreign Language Instructors

Due to the sudden change from traditional education to online education, the need for investigating online teaching practices of EFL instructors became an imperative. Studies revealed that most EFL instructors lacked sufficient training, technological, pedagogical knowledge and faced some difficulties. This mixed-methods study aimed at exploring online teaching experiences and perceptions of the EFL instructors working at preparatory schools of three state universities within the “Seven Principles for Good Practice” (SPGP) framework. Data collection instruments were an online questionnaire and an interview. 124 in-service instructors answered the questionnaire. To gather qualitative data, nine in-service instructors were interviewed. Quantitative data revealed that the instructors implemented the Seven Principles from a satisfactory to an excellent level. The least practiced principles were Active Learning and Cooperation among Students. The most practiced principle was Student-Faculty Contact. The interviews revealed a number of factors that hindered the implementation of these principles and provided suggestions for implementing them. The study yielded a number of implications to enhance the quality of online teaching such as the need for establishing rules, redesigning preparatory programs, integrating technological and pedagogical knowledge in preservice and in-service training, self-improvement, utilizing the SPGP as a rubric to evaluate and design programs and training.