Exploring the Intercultural Awareness of EFL Instructors in Turkish Higher Education

Korzilius, van Hoft, and Planken (2007) suggest that intercultural awareness involves being empathetic and being able to shift away from one\'s perspective. In a communication setting, intercultural awareness refers to the capacity to adopt the viewpoint(s) of conversation partners from a different culture and to comprehend and acknowledge their unique cultural backgrounds. In this context, the aim of this study is to explore the intercultural awareness of EFL instructors in the context of Turkish Higher Education. Participants are 50 EFL instructors from the English Language Teaching Department and the School of Foreign Languages in Türkiye. The current study adopted a quantitative design; the data tool is the English Language Instructors’ Questionnaire for Intercultural Awareness’ The data is analyzed via the Mann-Whitney U test. The data from the questionnaire is analyzed in two contexts: Intercultural Awareness of Native and Non-Native and Novice and Expert Instructors. As the findings of the study suggest there are significant differences between the attitudes of Native / Non-Native as well as for the Novice and Expert Instructors for Intercultural Awareness.