IRANIAN EAP PRACTITIONERS’ COMPETENCES, PRACTICES, AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Given the importance of teaching methodology in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and professional development (PD) for EAP teachers, this survey examined and explored the differences of the self-adjudged perceptions of EAP practice competences and PD activities of two main groups of Iranian teachers: those with an English language teaching (ELT) background and subject content teachers who teach EAP. A sample of 105 EAP teachers (53 English language teachers and 52 content teachers) responded to two questionnaires: a granulated, 72-item questionnaire exploring competences in a wide variety of aspects of EAP practice and a smaller 19-item questionnaire relating to frequency of participation in PD activities. Additionally, the teacher data sets were triangulated by the use of a 58-item questionnaire completed by 502 Iranian undergraduate students taking EAP courses. The teacher questionnaire findings indicated higher self-adjudged competences by the ELTbackground teachers in the areas of receptive and productive skills, grammar and vocabulary, feedback and error correction, and assessment and evaluation. Similarly, the student questionnaires rated those teachers with an ELT background more highly in the same five areas. The implications of the findings for the future development of EAP in Iran in terms of teacher development and further research are then discussed.


INTRODUCTION
English for Academic Purposes (EAP), as an important branch of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), has traditionally been responsible for teaching "specialized linguistic knowledge and literacy skills" (Pérez-Llantada & Swales, 2017: 42) to prepare tertiary students and researchers for successful communication in academic and research settings. EAP courses subdivide into general EAP courses (EGAP) for students preparing to study in a range of disciplines and specific EAP courses (ESAP) for students preparing to study in a specific discipline. The focus of the research reported here relates to teachers of ESAP courses, who are involved in the preparation of students for discipline-specific academic study (rather than professional practice), but for whom the insights of much of the ESP literature is considered relevant and drawn upon extensively here.
To inform the activities of ESP (and EAP), research to date has addressed a range of areas such as student needs analysis, materials development and evaluation, and discourse analysis (Hyland, 2019). In considering the range of research activities of the allied fields of ESP and EAP, a number of writers note that the focus has been mainly on the two areas of students and materials/textbooks, which are regarded as the essential elements of any language teaching and learning program (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987;Richards, 1998). Exemplifying this view, a considerable body of ESP research has addressed students and their needs (Bocanegra-Valle, 2016;Hyland, 2019) as well as materials/textbooks (Basturkmen & Bocanegra-Valle, 2018;Stoller, 2016). Similarly, when considering the larger body of EAP research, the literature on EAP teachers (vis-à-vis other areas of EAP) is relatively limited (Ding, 2019;Ding & Bruce, 2017;Ding & Campion, 2016). The situation seems to be that issues relating to teachers' practices, professional development, and needs have been eclipsed by the large body of research on materials and students' needs (Basturkmen, 2014(Basturkmen, , 2019. Belcher (2013: 544) even suggests that "the community that ESP [and EAP] professionals know the least about is their own".
A decade ago, Hamp-Lyons (2011: 100) also decried this lack of focus on the EAP practitioner, asserting that "progress in materials development has not been matched by progress in developing and delivering professional training courses for future teachers of EAP, and a great need still remains in this area". A recent review article by Nazari (2020) and studies of the bibliometrics of journals in the EAP and ESP fields (Hyland & Jiang, 2021;Liu & Hu, 2021;Riazi, Ghanbar, & Fazel, 2020) also highlighted the limited range of research on EAP teachers. Thus, although such programs are becoming increasingly widespread around the world, it seems that only marginal research attention has been paid to the training, development, and practices of teachers (Basturkmen, 2014(Basturkmen, , 2019Belcher, 2013).
Because of the demanding nature of their profession, EAP and ESP teachers play multiple roles beyond classroom teaching (Charles & Pecorari, 2016;Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998). According to Woodrow (2018), their roles and 2. THE STUDY CONTEXT As Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998) maintain, contextual differences determine learners' needs and the appropriate levels of specificity in ESP and EAP programs. In Iran, as an expanding-circle country in the Middle East, mainstream education at tertiary level is delivered in Persian, the country's official language. Undergraduate students are required to take one general English course, known as English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP), as well as a few discipline-based EAP courses, characterized as English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) to become prepared to access textbooks and publications in English during their undergraduate and graduate studies (Tavakoli & Tavakol, 2018). While all EGAP courses are implemented and administered by ELT departments and taught by 167 274 Vol. 9(2)(2021):  English language (EL) teachers, ESAP courses are mostly taught by content teachers and a limited number of content-informed EL teachers (Atai & Fatahi-Majd, 2014). The focus of the present study is on ESAP teachers. It should be noted that although ESAP courses are included in subject-matter curricula (e.g. chemical engineering, psychology, physical education), the national curriculum does not explicitly state who should teach them (Taherkhani, 2019). Additionally, while EL teachers can benefit from a wide range of PD opportunities and activities, there are unfortunately no well-established teacher training/education programs and PD opportunities for ESAP teachers.
Substantial criticism of the current Iranian EAP system at tertiary level has been expressed concerning, inter alia, issues directly related to ESAP teachers and their education/training (Iranmehr et al., 2018). The background to this critique is that there are no formal, established ESAP teacher training programs in Iran. ESAP courses are taught by either content teachers who possess a level of English proficiency or content-informed EL teachers, and there is little or no collaboration or cooperation between the two groups. While this situation is generally wellknown, the present study sought to examine more closely the knowledge and practice competences as well as the professional development of these two teacher groups.
Therefore, the study was motivated by the following research questions (RQs

METHOD
The study is a response to Basturkmen's (2014Basturkmen's ( , 2019 call for more in-depth, empirical research on teachers in a wide variety of contexts, in this case the Iranian context, and specifically the previously highlighted issue of ESAP practitioners. The overall design framework of the study is interpretive, the research style (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2011) is survey, and the data collection instruments used are fixed-response item questionnaires. The purpose of this survey research was to provide a panoramic overview of the main trends and tendencies in current Iranian ESAP practice by the two main teacher groups. The 'panoramic overview' approach was taken to provide empirical evidence for a structural situation in the wider context of ESAP teaching in Iran. It was considered that, given the nature of the issue under investigation, the research questions asked, and the ethical issues 167 275 Vol. 9(2)(2021):  involved, this 'big picture' approach was more appropriate than more granulated research styles such as ethnography or case study.

Participants
There were two main groups of participants in this study: ESAP teachers and undergraduate students. Specifically, 105 ESAP teachers (53 EL teachers and 52 content teachers) were surveyed for the purposes of the study. The ESAP teacher group included several teachers who taught the students in this study and other teachers chosen via convenience and snowball sampling. The teachers were from several academic majors (N=16) and leading state universities (N=15). Two groups of teachers were identified through the questionnaires for comparative purposes in the analysis -those with an English language teaching background (EL teachers) and subject content teachers who also taught ESAP (content teachers). In addition, a total of 502 undergraduate students taking ESAP courses were chosen through random cluster sampling in the 2018-2019 academic year. To ensure sample representativeness, they were selected from a wide range of majors (N=21) and a large number of leading state universities (N=15). The students were taught by either EL teachers (52.6%, N=264) or content teachers (47.4%, N=238). Table 1 provides a detailed profile of the participants' demographic information.

Instruments
Based on Dörnyei's (2010) steps for questionnaire development, three Likert-scale questionnaires were designed to explore ESAP teachers' teaching competence, PD activities, and classroom practices. The statements in questionnaires were developed based on BALEAP's Competency Framework for Teachers of English for Academic Purposes (CFTEAP) and Teachers of English for Academic Purposes (TEAP) documents (BALEAP, 2008(BALEAP, , 2014 as well as the results of preparatory unstructured interviews with EAP and content teachers who participated in a related project (Hejazi, 2021). The questionnaires relating to teaching competences and classroom practices drew on Alexander (2012), Atai and Fatahi-Majd (2014), Atai and Hejazi (2019), Chostelidou, Griva, and Tsakiridou (2009), and Rajabi, Kiany, and Maftoon (2012. In addition, the professional development questionnaire was designed based on previous questionnaires by Jing (2010) and Wichadee (2012). Then, the questionnaires were examined and revised to enhance their clarity, content-relatedness, and format by a reference panel of applied linguistics professors, EAP teachers, and psychometricians (N=8). The questionnaires were originally designed in English, but translated into Persian and back-translated to English with the help of some EAP teachers and translation experts in order to make sure about the quality of the translation. Finally, some additional modifications were undertaken to improve the questionnaires based on a pilot study with representative samples of ESAP teachers and undergraduate students.
Following the common practice for scale development and validation (Hair et al., 2010;Worthington & Whittaker, 2006), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was run in Amos (Version 23) to verify the factor structure of the questionnaires, that is to ensure that the questions were actually measuring the construct that the researchers intended to measure. Higher factor loadings for items indicate that they are suitable to measure the intended construct.  3,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16 . After removing a few items with factor loadings below 0.3 and making some model modifications, three separate questionnaires were obtained to explore ESAP Vol. 9(2)(2021):  teachers' teaching competence (Appendix A), ESAP teachers' PD activities (Appendix B), and students' perceptions of ESAP teachers' classroom practices (Appendix C) with acceptable model fitness indices and internal consistency coefficients. Tables 2, 3, and 4 show the CFA results as well as Cronbach's alpha coefficients of reliability for different sub-scales of the questionnaires.

Procedure
The data collection procedure was conducted in the 2018-2019 academic year. Out of 140 and 625 questionnaires distributed among the ESAP teachers and students, respectively, 105 and 502 were returned in person or via email, which resulted in response rates of 75% and 80%, respectively. The participants were allowed sufficient time to complete the questionnaires in their native language, i.e. Persian. The anonymity and confidentiality of the collected data were guaranteed for the participants. Additionally, the teachers and students provided their informed consent and were informed that their participation was on a voluntary basis. The exclusion criteria were refusal to give informed consent, incomplete questionnaires, and unwillingness to continue the study.

Design and data analysis
The study involved the use of both descriptive and inferential statistics. The values of skewness and kurtosis did not exceed 2 and 7, respectively; thus, there was no departure from the normality assumption (West, Finch, & Curran, 1995). Independent samples t tests were performed to analyze the data. Moreover, Cronbach's alpha coefficients and CFA were used to examine the reliability and construct validity of the questionnaires, respectively.
Similarly, independent samples t tests were run to explore statistical differences between ESAP teachers (content and EL) in terms of their PD activities (  Table 6 indicates that EL teachers have statistically significant higher means in all three categories of PD activities, namely, observation and assistance from other teachers (t(103) = 3.43, p = .00), conference participation and research (t(86.28) = 8.42, p = .00), and personal development (t(103) = 5.67, p = .00).

DISCUSSION
The main objective of this study was to address and provide further empirical evidence for a recognized structural issue in the Iranian ESAP practitioner community, specifically divergences between the two ESAP teacher groups of English language and subject content teachers. This goal was achieved by developing overall profiles of the two groups in terms of their teaching competences, participation in PD activities, and classroom practices. In what follows, a comprehensive discussion of the findings is presented. The findings are then used to support the case for further EAP teacher development in a number of areas, which are outlined in the conclusion section.

ESAP teachers' teaching competences
In relation to the teaching competences of ESAP teachers (RQ1), the questionnaire results showed EL teachers' higher and statistically significant means in receptive skills, productive skills, grammar and vocabulary, feedback and error correction, classroom procedures, and students' needs as well as higher but not statistically significant means in assessment and evaluation and ESAP syllabus and materials. These findings are in line with Hejazi's (2013) observations and confirm the assertion that content teachers have "insufficient knowledge about English language methodology as well as low levels of competence in the areas of EAP instruction, course design, and needs analysis" (Rajabi et al., 2012: 280). EL teachers' greater competences could possibly be attributed to their higher general English proficiency (GEP) level, familiarity with different language teaching areas, and English language teaching experience (Hejazi, 2021).

ESAP teachers' PD activities
As to the findings relating to the PD activities of ESAP teachers (RQ2), the questionnaire results revealed that EL teachers had statistically higher means in Vol. 9(2)(2021):  observation and assistance from other teachers, conference participation and research, and personal development. This finding seems to indicate that EL teachers place more importance on, and are more actively involved in PD activities, which could have possibly led to their outperformance in this study, as elsewhere (e.g. Rajabi et al., 2012). In fact, while PD in the field of ELT is fully fledged around the world (Borg, 2011), there is still limited research on EAP teachers' PD (Basturkmen, 2019;Blaj-Ward, 2014) and a limited number of development opportunities in only few countries, e.g. the UK, for EAP teachers. However, as Bocanegra-Valle and Basturkmen (2019) emphasize, it is important for EAP teachers to undertake ongoing professional development. Similarly, Tao and Gao (2018) highlight the importance of creating increased PD activities and opportunities for EL teachers entering the EAP teaching field. As part of this, Blaj-Ward (2015)

ESAP teachers' classroom practices
When considering ESAP teachers' classroom practices (RQ3), the statistically significant higher means of EL teachers in the areas of receptive skills, ESAP materials, productive skills, ICT, grammar and vocabulary, feedback and error correction, and assessment and evaluation could indicate their higher potential and readiness to teach ESAP courses in the Iranian context. However, it is the case that most ESAP courses are taught by content teachers in Iranian universities, which has been the object of criticism of previous studies (e.g. Tavakoli & Tavakol, 2018). The results of the present study are in line with past research indicating the higher performance of EL teachers in several areas, such as the implementation of the objectives of EAP instruction, EAP teaching methodology, course design, needs analysis, classroom management, and assessment (e.g. Atai & Fatahi-Majd, 2014;Atai & Taherkhani, 2018;Davoudi-Mobarakeh, Eslami-Rasekh, & Barati, 2014;Rajabi et al., 2012). These differential findings between the instructional practices of EL and content teachers could be attributed to their contrasting cognitions on key EAP issues such as EAP goals, differences between EAP and English for General Purposes (EGP), and EAP teachers' qualifications and roles (Atai, Babaii, & Lotfi Gaskaree, 2017).
Given the nature of EAP as highly focused on teaching (Anthony, 2018;Hyland & Wong, 2019), the significance of teaching methodology in EAP (Hafner & Miller, 2019;Hyland, 2006;Northcott, 2013), and the absence of EAP teacher education programs in Iran (Iranmehr et al., 2018), it seems that EL teachers could Vol. 9(2)(2021): 272-296 be considered better candidates to teach EAP courses thanks to their generic ELT qualifications and previous language teaching experience.
The statistically non-significant difference between the two ESAP teacher groups in translation might be justified in view of the fact that translation constitutes an essential part of EAP classes in Iran to the extent that not only content teachers but also EL teachers implement such activities in their classes, which has received intense criticism in past research (Tavakoli & Tavakol, 2018).

CONCLUSIONS
The present study addressed the gap identified as the "little commentary literature concerning ESP [and EAP] teaching methodologies and teaching/learning activities" (Basturkmen, 2020: 6) by developing an overview of Iranian ESAP teachers' teaching competences, classroom practices, and PD activities. The findings suggest that EL teachers may be better positioned to teach ESAP courses than content teachers. Specific issues that emerged relating to the content teachers of ESAP were: low levels of GEP, insufficient familiarity with ESAP teaching skills, and excessive focus on translation in ESAP classes, as reported elsewhere (e.g. Rajabi et al., 2012).
However, despite the results of the present study and previous research indicating EL teachers' greater competence levels and readiness to teach ESAP courses in Iran, the reality is that most ESAP courses are offered by content departments that select who should teach them, i.e. a content or EL teacher, a situation that has consequently led to the preference for content teachers to teach the mandatory ESAP course(s) relating to their subject area. The situation is similar to Japan and some other Asian countries (Fukui, Noguchi, & Watanabe, 2009), where content teachers are generally preferred since content knowledge "take[s] precedence over knowledge about language learning and teaching" (Anthony, 2011: 2).
This situation suggests that the EAP profession in Iran can be considered a 'peripheral support system' (Ding & Bruce, 2017), a perception that negatively affects the position and identity of EAP teachers and EAP departments. Supporting this view of the marginal position of EAP in the Iranian higher education system is the study by Iranmehr et al. (2018), which suggests that content departments lack criteria for the selection, training, and evaluation of EAP teachers. Alongside this, the numbers of EAP departments are insufficient and, where they do exist, they have a perceived lower status. Generally, a lack of accountability and efficiency in the delivery of EAP are two inevitable outcomes, which can lead to marginalization of EAP in general and EAP teachers in particular in the Iranian context.
The present study used a cross-sectional survey design and self-reported questionnaires to provide an overview of the current EAP teacher situation in Iran. However, to build upon this study, future research could employ a longitudinal Vol. 9(2)(2021):  design and gather data through triangulation of other data collection techniques (e.g. focus-group interview, observation, life history narrative, and ethnography) and draw upon a wider range of sources (e.g. heads of EAP departments, policy makers, and vice deans of educational affairs in universities). It should also be noted that the study was conducted in the context of tertiary education in Iran, an expanding-circle country with its own unique cultural, educational, and social characteristics; thus, care should be taken in generalizing the findings to other contexts.

IMPLICATIONS
Implications of the findings of this study, along with those of previous research, suggest the need to invest in EL teachers via pre-service and in-service EAP teacher training programs/workshops, which is in line with BALEAP's (2008: 2) assumption for employing teachers with "post-experience training in the teaching of English and experience of studying at postgraduate level". For example, similar to the Turkish context (Kırkgöz, 2019), pre-service EAP teacher education programs could be designed and implemented for ESAP teachers in Iran. As a first step, it is suggested that more EAP/ESP modules be included in TESOL programs in Iran to address the real demands and needs of EAP teachers in universities. Such modules could refresh EL teachers' knowledge about practical aspects of language teaching, learning, and testing with a special focus on EAP. Additionally, some elective content modules on different subject-matter domains, such as medicine or engineering, could be presented to cater for teachers' need for disciplinary content knowledge and address the particular teaching and learning methodologies in different subjectmatter domains, e.g. problem solving in English for medical purposes (Basturkmen, 2010). This type of development could be a first step to establishing MA programs for EAP similar to those in the University of Leeds (https://www.leeds.ac.uk) and the University of Nottingham (https://www.nottingham.ac.uk) in the UK.
To underpin the implementation of these types of improvements, it is recommended that the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology invest more in EAP research that supports and informs teacher development. Given the fact that the training needs of non-native EAP teachers, who constitute a large number of the global EAP teachers' community, are different from those in countries where English is the L1 (Hamp-Lyons, 2011), further research should be undertaken to design a local competency framework for PD and training of Iranian EAP teachers, similar to those developed in other contexts (Khamis, 2019;Pham & Ta, 2016), or localize the CFTEAP (BALEAP, 2008(BALEAP, , 2014. These developments could significantly contribute to establishing objective criteria for the recruitment and development of EAP teachers in the Iranian context. Additionally, considering the importance of close cooperation and collaboration among different stakeholders as a 'social need' (Basturkmen, 2019) for the successful Vol. 9(2)(2021): 272-296 implementation of EAP programs (Belcher, 2009;Hall, 2013;Hyland, 2019), further research is needed to investigate potential institutional and cultural barriers to the advancement of the EAP field and propose practical solutions to the current issues facing the field, some of which have been raised here.
Given EAP teachers' "plurality of interrelated necessities, concerns, expectations, lacks, and wants" (Bocanegra-Valle & Basturkmen, 2019: 144), future studies could also explore the possible effect of teaching experience, qualifications, and PD on EL teachers' multi-faceted professional identity struggles while entering the EAP field. Considering the marginalization of EAP teachers in Iran and many other contexts like Canada (MacDonald, 2016), further research should systematically examine the Iranian ELT national curriculum as well as the actual practices and policies of higher education institutes to discover the major underlying reasons for this phenomenon and offer practical solutions to improve this situation.
EAP associations have considerable potential "for development of the knowledge base of the field, for practitioner formation, and for developing a collective voice for articulating and raising awareness of current issues, innovations, and concerns within a community, and EAP more widely" (Bruce, 2021: 33). Therefore, as one way of improving the status of EAP in the current Iranian higher education system, more national attention should be devoted to EAP as an important branch of English language teaching by organizing associations (similar to The Norwegian Forum for EAP and The China EAP Association) as well as EAP-specific events (similar to conferences held by BALEAP and the European Association of Languages for Specific Purposes). Finally, it is suggested that the Iranian Journal of English for Academic Purposes (IJEAP) take significant measures to draw and direct EAP researchers' attention to different under-researched EAP areas such as teacher development by running special issues and announcing call for papers similar to those published as 'Researching EAP Practices' in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes (JEAP). SHIVA KAIVANPANAH is an associate professor at the University of Tehran (Iran). She has published a number of papers in academic journals. Her current research interests include vocabulary studies, teacher education, and issues in teaching academic writing to English language learners. SAYYED MOHAMMAD ALAVI is a professor of applied linguistics in the University of Tehran (Iran). He teaches language teaching methodology, language testing and assessment, and teacher education courses. He has published in prestigious international journals such as Language Assessment Quarterly, Language Testing Journal, RELC Journal, and The Language Learning Journal.
IAN BRUCE is a senior lecturer in applied linguistics at the University of Waikato (New Zealand). His research involves the analysis of academic, professional, and journalistic genres, and his publications are in the areas of genre studies and academic writing. His most recent book is Expressing critical thinking through disciplinary texts: Insights from five genre studies (Bloomsbury, 2020).
S. YAHYA HEJAZI is a PhD candidate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in the University of Tehran (Iran). He has been a research scholar at the Victoria University of Wellington (NZ) and taught as a visiting lecturer at some Iranian universities. His current research interests include English for specific/academic purposes (ESP/EAP) and educational psychology. Identifying students' target situation needs in reading 66.
Identifying students' target situation needs in writing 67.
Identifying students' target situation needs in listening 68.
Identifying students' target situation needs in speaking 69.
Addressing students' target situation needs in reading 70.
Addressing students' target situation needs in writing 71.
Addressing students' target situation needs in listening 72.
Teaching how to preview a text 3. Teaching how to predict or guess the text meaning 4. Teaching how to critically evaluate technical information in written texts

5.
Teaching how to take notes while reading technical texts 6.
Teaching how to scan EAP texts 7.
Teaching how to skim EAP texts 8.
Teaching how to guess the meaning of unknown words from context while reading 9.
Teaching how to get the text main idea 10. Choosing appropriate methods for teaching EAP like pair/group work, role play, group discussion, etc. 57.
Involving students in classroom activities 58.
Assigning homework