Understanding the Teaching-Research Nexus in the Saudi EFL Context: Insights from an Intercultural Language Teaching Project

Situated within the Saudi English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, this chapter reports on a collaboration between two in-service teachers and a researcher to adapt and implement an intercultural communicative language teaching (ICLT) framework at a public English Language Institute. Drawing on data from the researcher’s journal and semi-structured interviews with the teachers, the authors explore the factors influencing the dynamics of a teacher-researcher collaboration to adapt an existing syllabus to the ICLT framework. The qualitative content analysis of the data revealed four underlying factors that shaped the teacher-researcher collaboration: institutional investment in research; teachers’ perceptions of research collaboration; the jargonisation of research; and challenges faced by the teachers during the adaptation of the ICLT framework in the Saudi EFL context. The implications of these factors for EFL programs aiming to incorporate an ICLT approach and promote teacher-researcher collaboration are discussed.