Iranian vs. Non-Iranian Scholars’ Beliefs over Collaborative EAP Practices: Legitimizing English Language Instructors in EAP Courses (Research Paper)

Iranian vs. Non-Iranian Scholars’ Beliefs over Collaborative EAP Practices: Legitimizing English Language Instructors in EAP Courses

[1]Marjan Vosoughi*

[2]Susan Ghahremani Ghajar

IJEAP- 1905-1425

[3]Atefeh Navarchi

Received: 2019-08-25                          Accepted: 2019-10-05                      Published: 2019-10-29

Abstract

The current research was run through a non-observational research scheme tapping two groups of experts- Iranian versus non-Iranian expert university instructors who were indulged in EAP courses. The focus groups including seven Iranian and eighteen non-Iranian instructors/researchers (from both ELT and non-ELT domains) at tertiary levels were recruited and their views were collected through researcher-made questionnaires and an online sequential conference talk passing through the Research Gate social networking platform. Various online interviews with the target participants were managed to 1) peek into what had been lacking in previous EAP teaching models thus far regarding collaborative models of EAP both in Iran and outside the country, 2) gain English professors’ innovations as highlighted in their practices for upgrading collaborative EAP teaching, and 3) survey the co-presence of language and content teachers along with language learners in EAP classes. Findings after content analysis of the gained data demonstrate that Iranian ELT practitioners inside the country believed in collaborative practices, but they found it so hard to create such a situation due to some reasons related to mismatching psychological characteristics of content and language instructors as well as some other flawed educational arrangements in the country. Non-ELT teachers inside the country also constantly talked about two separate expertise which did not include language teachers as legitimate colleagues of their own in such courses. Across outside borders, the situation was far more satisfactory and showing a more optimum cooperation of language and content teachers.

Keywords: Collaborative EAP, Content Teachers, EAP Teacher Roles, Language Teachers

1. Introduction

Within Iranian academic settings, English language professors/instructors are not recognized as legitimized teachers to hold EAP courses and, in the majority of cases, there is not even any collaboration involved among the two professors in teaching these courses as Atai, Babaii & Taherkhani (2017) also raised the same concerns. Even much earlier, in Atai's study (2000), one source of this deficiency inside the local context had been recognized as the insufficiency of educational practicum as to content teachers that are not usually aware of language teaching skills, and on the other hand language teachers who might not be familiarized with Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK).This source of unfamiliarity on the part of two teachers with two different expertise may be initiated from the fact that as Hutchinson and Waters (1993) also once declared, ESP/EAP instruction is endowed with some key arguments. The first argument has to do with the purpose of such courses, which as it is termed, is not educating specific varieties and forms of English, but it is associated with some contextual features only learned in the target context through language uses on diverse states of affairs. Second argument deals with the learning of technical words and specific grammatical forms, which do not necessarily lead to communication. And last but not least argument deals with the fact that managing ESP/EAP courses like other kinds of language teaching course is dependent on knowing some learning principles not any special methodology. Such an argument might decree in itself who should manage such courses in itself. However, there have long been incessant debates over this issue. In this study, an attempt was made to see how an English language instructor can be highly efficient in such courses through analyzing diverse teaching models as provided by prominent, experienced teachers both inside and across outside borders.

In order to explicitly see through such a context of inquiry, it is initially noteworthy to clarify three main domains in which integration of content with language has led to collaboration between the two teachers/instructors (language and subject matter): Content-based Instruction (CBI), Content Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Traditionally, collaborative frameworks began with Mohan's (1986) model initiated from CBI pedagogies many years ago. However, by sifting through a myriad of recently proposed models and suggested techniques in urging collaborative designs for joint educational practices regarding language and subject matter teachers, in recent years, one may see a number of research studies, which have focused on how of this joint practice in diverse settings like EFL, ESL as well as English speaking countries. Researchers on such domains have mostly come across these distinct paradigms including CBI, CLIL, and finally ESP interchangeably to signify how the dominance of content over language or vice versa or both in tandem could be established so that maximum learning could happen (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 2011).

By definition, CBI refers to the situations of use where teaching content has priority over learning the language and it was originally devised for the contexts related to English as a Second Language (ESL) settings. In CLIL, as another related paradigm, a dual approach was taken for teaching both content and language (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh 2010). Regarding ESP, which is mostly common in English as Foreign language (EFL) situations, from the 1980s, the integration took the form of ESP teaching targeted towards English as Additional Language (EAL) to adults (Jordan, 1991) and mostly within higher education contexts for meeting specific needs of various university disciplines. At tertiary levels, ESP changed then its route to still a new domain termed as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) to be differentiated from English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) (Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998).

Still other terminologies used by the researchers which could add to a chaos in this milieu were theme-based, sheltered and adjunct models in ESP teaching in which case integration of language with subject matters was managed but with varying degrees along a continuum (Davies, 2003). For more information, the interested readers might refer to Tzoannopoulou (2015) who clarified how these three fields were run for teaching content through language. In this study, the terms ESP and EAP are used interchangeably to refer to English courses taught within academic settings as two-credit specialized units. Nonetheless, due to chaotic, interchangeable uses of ESP/EAP terms in the existing literature, a more general term ‘Language Content Instruction’ (LCI) is used.

Atai (2000), once mentioned in his call towards integrated ESP models proclaiming that there has been a wide gap between theory and practice in knowledge dissemination for the students at international settings in Iran, which has demolished students' internal desires and motivation for zest of knowing through the medium of English language. During a very large-scale comprehensive study in Iran, he claimed that university instructors at ESP courses could not have met the challenges within Academic Literacy (AL) trends. The present study sought the reasons for such setbacks in collaborative ESP/EAP through a comparative framework to reach some more general aims including 1) legitimization of English language teachers in collaborative EAP courses inside the country, 2) exploring collaborative aims within EAP errands, 3) elevating EAP students’ role in their courses, and 4) bringing some novelty to EAP courses in Iran. Specifically, aims of the present research were to initially peek into what had been lacking in previous EAP teaching models thus far regarding collaborative models of EAP both in Iran and outside the country, gain English professors’ innovations as highlighted in their practices for upgrading collaborative EAP teaching, and finally survey the co-presence of language and content teachers along with language learners in EAP classes.

2. Review of Literature

In line with the main purposes of the present research and specifically to legitimize English language instructors for leading EAP course at college levels, initially, various roles related to collaboration and cooperative practices between language and content teachers were specifically focused upon within the mostly related literature in English for Academic English (EAP) contexts. Accordingly, in the following section, several roles extracted from the research studies have been presented in which case LCI had urged university teachers to cooperate in managing EAP courses.

2.1. Roles Assigned to Language Teachers in LCI Contexts

At the outset, in order to explicate how a language professor might contribute to the academic literacy skills of his/her students at such courses, the present researchers made an in-depth study in the exiting literature to scrutinize what possible roles a language teacher could play to instantiate collaborated EAP models in an EFL context, mainly at tertiary levels. In the explored literature, within diverse places and contexts in which LCI had been the aim, there were diverse assigned roles for a language teacher. In some research undertakings, language teachers had come of help to a content teacher as:

1) Discourse analysts for material designing aims (Khoshsima & Abusaeedi, 2009; Schleppegrell & de Oliveira, 2006; Stroller & Robinson, 2013),

2) Counselors via professional development (Moore, Ploettner & Deal, 2015),

3) Mentors for disciplinary writing (Gimenez & Thondhlana, 2012),

4) Translators and/or interpreters (Pawan & Ortloff, 2011),

5) Communication consultants in English lecture-led classes (Arnó-Macià & Mancho-Barés, 2015; Ebrahimi Farshchi, & Saeidi, 2012),

6) Vocational trainers (Platt, 1993),

7) Arbitrators in legal writing pedagogy (Bruce, 2002),

8) Transformative practitioners (Morgan, 2009), and finally

9) Team teaching partners (Perry & Stewart, 2005) among others.

Below, each role is briefly discussed with reference to the cited authors above.

2.1.1. EAP Language Teacher as a Discourse Analyst

In stroller's and Robinson's study (2013), first the scarce collaborative tryouts between the language and content teacher was seen to be associated with the limited literacy practices at tertiary levels. They explicitly focused on the infrequent as well as at stake language disciplinary courses of action in some contexts. Consequently, they alleged how this had made partnership between the applied linguists and content teachers fall apart. Therein, students from various disciplines including Engineering sciences, Technology, Mathematics and Science were required to watch for 'form', 'style', 'audience', and 'purpose' in their writings. Still, other roots of the literacy problems had been reported to have been initiated from unfamiliarity of students with 'organizational conventions', 'formatting expectations', 'vocabulary choices', and 'content'. Here, the role that a language teacher played in their project otherwise titled as 'Write Like a Chemist' among a group of junior Chemistry students, was that of analyzing the discourse that above-mentioned university disciplines needed and bringing pedagogical knowledge to work as to literacy instruction to solve language-related challenges of ESL students in university classrooms. Two fruitful outcomes that had emerged in this project in the end were: 1) Developing a textbook (Robinson, Stoller, Costanza-Robinson & Jones 2008), and 2) Upgrading a companion website {http://www.oup.com/us/writelikeachemist}. This was for giving access to a number of instructional materials resulting from vigorous textual analysis and instructional literacy practices by the language teachers on four main university genres needed for a chemist involving 'Journal articles', 'Research proposals', 'Conference abstracts' and finally 'Scientific posters'.

2.1.2. EAP Language Teachers as Counselors

Moore et al (2015) provided grounds on how collaboration between/among language and subject matter teachers could be effectively carried out by pairing university teachers from each department as language and content specialists. In this model, as proposed by Moore et al, content teachers were thought to be enlightened with multi-cultural and multilingual practices coming from language teachers and experts. In their study, they had screened a professional development project in which scheduled meetings for professional talks and lectures were arranged but hosted by language experts. Instructions on how to manage content classes through English medium instructions were re/checked via subsequent supervision of language teachers. This study had actually been inspired by Cultural Historical Theory (Engeström, 2001) and claimed to help content teachers draw on dialogical knowledge expansion among content teachers (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011) and expanding teacher cognition.

2.1.3. EAP Language Teachers as Mentors

Still another role for language instructors was existent as to language and content teacher collaboration or partnership regarding the pedagogical help that an applied linguist could give to a content teacher towards writing in the disciplines at higher education. Gimenez and Thondhlana (2012) reported their project among an engineering community of students for whom 'writing like an engineer' designated a specific multi-faceted disciplinary epistemology over writing process. Such multiplicity of views hidden in Engineering Sciences to the authors' view was initiated mainly from the impact of some sciences like pure Physics and Designing as well as other fields of study like Social Sciences, Health care, and Mathematics to solve real world problems. The dynamism involved in this multiplicity of views could lead engineers to form and disseminate knowledge in specific multi-disciplinary ways.

A recent attempt in promoting joint practice and/or collaboration in ESP contexts was made by Cargill, O’Connor, & Li (2012).In their study, research skills in a comprehensive project were provided to some Chinese Science students in a framework titled as 'Collaborative Interdisciplinary Publication Skills Education' (CIPSE).Here, a joint practice including experienced editors, referees and authors of scientific articles in English (scientists) and research communication teachers/applied linguists (English teachers) got together to aid university students in writing publishable articles. Three steps followed were following involving 1) Genre analysis of published example articles from participants’ target journals (presentation led by English teachers); 2) gatekeeper awareness, understanding and anticipating the role of reviewers and developing strategies for presenting research and 3) negotiating the acceptance phase of publishing (presentation led by scientists); and story development, packaging and value-adding to data, analysis and information to present and discuss the most important and novel findings of research to the chosen audience (presentation shared). Here, research writing skills and procedures were taught to the target students who were mostly postgraduate students and their knowledge in composing well-organized paragraphs and grammatical sentences had been taken for granted via self-reported 'confidence in writing' (p. 64) Likert scale surveys. Bilingual teaching already current in Chinese contexts also made the authors sure about the linguistic competencies of participants attending research-writing workshops under the study. In the end, participants 'consistently scored the combined presenter team of scientists plus English teacher as highly effective in helping them develop their skills to write and publish in English' (p. 66).

2.1.4. EAP Language Teachers as Translators/Interpreters

Pawan and Ortloff (2011) investigated factors that acted as facilitators and on the other hand as barriers as to collaboration between the two content and language teachers in a CBI context (A group of ESL teachers). They believed that in CBI contexts, ESL teachers initiated and led collaboration but they saw this case as a mediatory process between the two subject matter and language teachers. Among facilitating factors, trust among colleagues had come to bind the collaborative practices since content teachers could rely on language teachers' abilities in translating and/or interpreting information they needed to find and have access to from target language sources. In contrast, interpersonal interactions and administrative factors had turned the situation into a complex one, though. In some cases, if collaboration were to be fostered effectively, to their view, “From the outset, professionals and the establishments they worked in must be invested in the collaboration and in each other” (p.468). Time was a barrier in that since teachers were busy grading and teaching their courses, they considered themselves as intruders if they wanted to cooperate via seeking help from each other. Lack of knowledge of one another's fields of study had also led some subject matter teachers to rule out language teachers altogether. This complaint by language teachers indicated an insecure situation, which expelled further collaboration.

Making resource to the learners' L1 whether managed by language or content teachers has been currently endorsed but with mixed results (Jingxia, 2010 & Nikula, 2010, all cited in Bozdogan & Kardilag, 2013). Bozdogan and Kardilag referred to code-switching as a necessity but it was misused by the students in some cases. They alleged that in their research, students in content lessons where English had been used as the medium of instruction, mostly experienced lots of difficulty in expressing their views either in writing or speaking. In so doing, their teachers had to summarize the lessons in their L1 (here, Turkish) and when this happened, students immediately started taking notes however this could not happen while lectures were being presented. On the other hand, Md-Ali (2015) proposed very briefly how "code-switching' had been effective in content-based instructional contexts in a Malaysian setting, which were managed by bilingual content teachers. He asserted that "In the interactions between teachers and students, code switching could be tailored to function as a communicative strategy to clarify or reinforce the teacher’s points" (p.486).

In this study, collaboration was not seen along co/presence of the two teachers but that one content teacher who was an optimum user of the target language could manage such courses. In case misunderstanding arose, language teachers could provide proper equivalents so that learners could fully understand what was involved in the lesson.

2.1.5. EAP Language Teachers as Communication Consultants

Ebrahimi Farshchi and Saeidi (2012) explored CBI courses in Iranian settings. In Iran, such courses have been around quite recently in SAMA organization, which is affiliated with Islamic Azad University as one private institutional organization termed as 'open university' in the global contexts. SAMA is an abbreviation in Persian for Educational schools under the supervision of the Iranian Ministry of Education and Islamic Azad University. (Sazeman-e-Madares-e- Daneshgah-e-Azad-e-Eslami). In Iranian SAMA schools, highly proficient subject teachers who have passed teacher-training courses by language teaching professionals lead these courses. In their study, Ebrahimi Farshchi and Saeidi explored the influence of strategy training on some junior high school students' self-efficacy in their content-based courses. Communication strategies including 'time-gaining', 'circumlocution', 'appeal for help', 'approximation', 'code-switching' among others were included in the course by a language teacher and reported a successful performance of experimental over control group. In this study, the role that a language teacher could take was twofold: 1) a teaching mentor for subject matter teachers to promote their pedagogical skills during the workshops provided by language teaching professional who were skilled in language education for learners with minimum linguistic skills and abilities in the medium of instruction in another language. Here collaboration was indirectly involved without any other cooperation between the two teachers in other curriculum areas such as material designing and language testing, 2) strategy trainer in which s/he could help learners in such courses to eradicate their communication breakdowns.

Along the same line, Arnó-Macià and Mancho-Barés (2015) explored cooperation in a CLIL setting in a Spanish university. Possibility of collaboration was screened in three different disciplines (Law, business & Accounting). Class observations revealed diverse needs among the three disciplines towards the role of English language in content classes. In Business classes, for instance, it was noted that linguistic concerns did not impede content lectures in communications.This situation differed, however, in the other explored settings. Among Agronomy and Law students, the need towards language elements was felt on the parts of content teachers since lack of linguistic knowledge had blocked interactions in most cases. In the end, the authors reported participants' views over how of CLIL saying that administering language classes either before students took their content classes in English or as adjust models simultaneously was needed.

2.1.6. EAP Language Teachers as Professional Trainers

Platt (1993) cited mutual collaboration as aiming at future professional development of ESP learners esp. those with weak or limited English proficiency levels via training vocational practitioners, who were indulgent in ESP courses. In her study, a tutorial model in which aspects of sheltered and adjunct models had been utilized for collaborative teaching was examined among two groups of participants: high school and college students. Quite interestingly, vocational teachers did not associate students' improvements to the collaboration with English language teachers. Instead, factors such as experience with weak students, 'knowledge of other languages, personal sensitivity, and administrative support' (p. 144) were mentioned to had helped content teachers in their practice, though in the majority of cases, by evidence, only those had attended in staff development circles regarding language-focused practices could effectively provide students with structured interaction. The help by a language teacher in an ESL context, in this study, was construed as a teacher trainer: The staff development was conducted by an outside ESL consultant; no working relationships existed within the institution at that time between vocational and ESL faculty. (p. 144)

2.1.7. EAP Language Teachers as Arbitrators

Bruce (2002) favored a new role to EAP teachers in an ESL context in Hong Kong. Among a group of Law students, this was noted as pertinent since this role was at times confused with some other functions required of a language teacher. Primarily, expertise in rhetorical knowledge, functions and structure of legal statements made language teachers indulge in referring to some reasoning skills in understanding some rhetoric in legal texts such as 'problem-answer', which was at first queer to students' view to be characteristics of a language teacher, but it was discerned as efficient up to the end of the term. Initially, they felt analyzing the so-called legal genres was the job of a content teacher: an experienced lawyer in this case, but they changed their viewpoints as such. In this research study, Bruce verified how the cooperation of a language teacher could finally make it clear for law students 'how legal reasoning and argument serve to bridge language and content in their curriculum' (p. 326). 'The Problem, Question, and Answer' was followed during teaching argumentative writings for 'tort' as one law academic discourse. Here, it was noted that argumentative exercises provided by an EAP teacher helped law students have a clear view and revealed the fact that they could 'apply their theoretical legal learning to practical legal problems' (p.328). After passing some procedural stages in writing essential legal patterns, students entered a communicative stage with their EAP teacher through which they abstracted and orchestrated their gained knowledge with their language teacher to distinguish argument structure from fake ones. At this point, content teachers' roles began to emerge, though it could be replaced with an extensive knowledge base by language teachers' efforts in gaining that legal knowledge:

To be in a position to arbitrate on a question of relevance, the EAP teacher’s preparation for each PQ {problem/Question} must be extremely thorough; s/he cannot operate effectively without extensive substantive knowledge of the area of law addressed by the problem (p.330).

2.1.8. EAP Language Teachers as Transformative Practitioners

In line with critical EAP movements by Benesch (2001) and Pennycook (1997), Morgan (2009) suggested a new role for a language teacher, which was far beyond being a neutral language technician: Transformative practitioner. By Transformative practitioner, Morgan implied moving toward larger socio-political and economic conditions through EAP courses. Social state of affairs like Globalization was mentioned as an instance through which an EAP course teacher became legitimate to design educational courses. Upgrading the active role of a language in critical EAP courses then implied significant messages that were in line with ideas with prominent critical, social scholars like Paulo Freire (1996), Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux (2004), etc.

2.1.9. EAP Language Teachers as Partners

Inspired by team teaching concepts, Perry and Stewart (2005) explored the possibility of teachers' cooperation through an interdisciplinary project in a liberal arts college with the support given by foreign language teachers in an international university in Japan. In this study, an English to Speakers of other Languages (ESOL) teacher cooperated with a content teacher from Humanities in teaching the course jointly first but in the third and fourth grades, no support by the language teachers were given because between first year’s exposure with joint language-content courses, students spent a year in English-speaking countries. Partnership relationship between the two teachers is managed through a special procedure:

Several months prior to the start of each term, the administration circulates a partner preference form. Content-area teachers are instructed to list next to each of their first- and second-year courses four ESOL specialists with whom they would like to teach, in ranked order of preference. ESOL faculty select four content-area courses they would prefer to teach along with the listed course professors. While these forms (referred to as ‘‘dance cards’’ by most) are in circulation, faculty members approach colleagues about the possibility of working together on a course. These forms, along with rationale for choices, go to the office of the dean (p. 565).

After the partnership is established, successive 'planning, materials development, classroom instruction, and assessment' is followed (p. 566). Both teachers are present in class and the focus is not specifically either language or content but when problems occur with any focus, one of the two teachers lead the class. Barriers to partnership were analyzed over three facets: personality types and working styles, experience and beliefs about learning, which sometimes made matching of the two present teachers as mutual partners difficult to manage in one setting: classroom.

In a similar case, Lyster (2015) followed collaborative practices in an immersion program focusing on learning French grammatical gender across Science courses among school-aged students in an ESL context. In a nutshell, in nearly all research studies analyzed above, given roles to language teachers had also been aligned with specific challenges regarding the processes of collaboration, which was noteworthy for EAP/ESP methodology for legitimizing language teachers. In the present research, authors intended to explore this issue from practicality grounds to see how such partnership through collaboration could be instantiated in EAP courses based on actual practitioners in the field. Consequently, the following questions were posed:

Research Question One: How should the "Division of labor" as formulated by recent post constructivists be plotted for Iranian EAP courses?

Research Question Two: To what extent, are Iranian and non-Iranian scholars’ views compatible over collaborative EAP settings at college levels?

3. Methodology

In order to find sound and all-encompassing interpretations over the two suggested questions in this study, the researchers employed interview records along with two successive questionnaires (Appendix A). Accordingly, they embarked on finding proper informants in this regard from among both ELT and non-ELT (those colleagues having the experience of ESP course) across both Iranian and non-Iranian contexts. Non-Iranian informants were also included to make a cross-comparison between ESP courses in our Iranian context as the focus in this research, and outside larger contexts to reach a more complete picture in this regard. Hence, the research design used in this research was mainly projected through narrative inquiry (Xu & Connelly, 2010) tapping survey-type data via two instruments- questionnaires and interview logs.

3.1. Participants

Different local and international scholars within ESP/EAP practitioners voluntarily participated in this research as part of a larger scale study. Table 1 summarizes respondents' demographical data along with some information including their affiliation, academic position, and education, as well as their Research Gate (RG) score in the first phase, which we posted the first question in the question and answer page. This index was significant to us since based on this score, the degree of the respondents' contribution to the academic society and indulgence in publication affairs and academic advancement became known. RG signified the number of their publications, profile views, h-index (without self-citations), participation degrees in questioning-answering pages, and the number of followers of their views as members of this site. During conferencing stage through RG, since interview logs were already available through the website to all interested viewers, there was no need to hide voluntary participants’ stated identity information at that stage. But the participants’ personal information in the questionnaire and written interview phases among local ESP practitioners were kept confidential and instead pseudonyms were used.

Table 1: Respondents' Demographic Information and Academic Positions at Phase One

During posing the second question for the aims of the present study, we reframe the first question as: Should Technical English courses in universities be taught by language teachers or subject matter teachers? Is simultaneous co-presence possible? For this second question, we received much more diverse views during the first days and by more scholars from distinct countries across the globe. Thirteen respondents participated at this stage. Table 2 below shows demographic information of the contributors who helped us with their time in leading a more stimulating discussion.

Table 2: Respondents' Demographic Information and Academic Positions (Question No.2)

3.2. Data Collection Procedures

In order to mount scholars' views (both content and language teachers) over collaborated EAP teaching models, in-depth interviews with both Iranian and non-Iranian scholars as experts were managed across the globe to peek into what had been lacking in previous ESP teaching models in the local context, and to explore their non-Iranian’s innovations as highlighted in their practices for upgrading ESP/EAP teaching. In so doing, new questions recurrently emerged in each interview, which were included in further explorations in line with the utilized constructivist Grounded Theory (GT) in this research (Charmaz, 2006).

On dependability grounds, two distinct features in this research project were 1) the nature of question posing in interview sessions through online direct chatting inquiries, which was emergent as expected from exploratory research typologies as to GT research frameworks, and 2) the nature of data collection as a cyclical, ongoing process, which could classify our study among constructivist research frameworks. In each stage, we collected data to the point of saturation by the three stages of collection, analyzing, and interpretation as carried out altogether simultaneously to ensure maximum thick description of the research contexts. In each case, we then mapped emerged themes in each stage over research intentions to present a rich picture of what had been involved thus far in the wider world of ESP/EAP contexts. In line with the first proposed research question in this study regarding the relevant issues on ESP collaborative teaching models, at an initial stage, the first researcher opened a discussion room in her personal webpage at 'www.researchgate.net'. Before describing specific rationales behind using this website, it is preferable to briefly designate this research website on trustworthy and dependability grounds.

3.3. Research Gate Networking

This website is hosted by Research Gate officials that direct and organize online research studies on diverse fields of studies and their teams work for the aim of creating an international research dissemination assembly. This website was helpful in the present study in that it provided a space as a major source of data collection to gain access to a large number of both Iranian and non-Iranian scholars in ESP/EAP arenas. A large number of Iranian and non-Iranian scholars could be linked in this way.

'Research Gate' with nine million users from all around the world is a huge social networking site for the scientists and researcher to share and exchange their views, ask and answer questions, and find research collaborators for their research purposes at international levels. Tentative responses, which we gained through this website were codified and elaborated through thematic analysis (Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003) and content analysis techniques including 1) Open, 2) Axial and 3) Selective coding (Stauss & Corbin, 1990).

On Research gate website, the researchers posed a first leading open question at phase one in the designated discussion room on 14th Mehr, 2016. The first question was concerned with seeing if simultaneous co-presence of language and content teachers was possible in the first place in ESP courses within universities or not. We analyzed the forwarded joint talk lines in Maxqda (ver12.4) as a proper software package for analyzing qualitative data. This got possible via focus group summary data in this software.

4. Results and Discussion

Regarding the first question posed on the discussion room in research gate website, teachers indulged in LCI from diverse international contexts reported their experiences.

4.1. Response to the First Research Question:

Phase One: Content vs. Language Teacher Debates among International Experts

Open coding of the initial data gave rise to some major themes to be considered as relevant such as creating a positive personal relation between and among the two teachers to share the teachers’ responsibility through a voluntary process among some others which have been explicated below. Codes have also become bold in explanations and underlined in direct quotes to show clarity of analysis over datasets in the following sections.

Major Theme Line One:Need for a Positive Personal Relation between Language and Subject Matter Teachers

Psychosocial matching of the two teachers in terms of their desires in teaching was one of the first categories, which led to releasing this theme. Volunteering essence of cooperation between the two teachers on educational grounds was successively noted to promote this theme. Related categories have become bold below in examples to show such a case clearly. Cherie, an ELT activist in an EFL situation in Japan, reported a related experience with her former colleague concerning collaborative teaching in a Japanese university. She suggested that psychological aspects related to personal characteristics of those people who are involved in collaborative activities are so important.

Krushna, another ELT expert, asserted that whether such a team teaching takes place in Iran, japan or anywhere else, it is still accepting the voluntary [emphasis mine] shared responsibility of the two teachers that is more prominent. He continued:

Krushna: Though it may not be exactly about Iranian settings, in general one could feel that great result is always possible through team teaching. Simultaneous work consciously planned for effective and shared responsibility by teachers who come voluntarily to collaborate with good awareness of time within which prescribed course contents need be covered to the best advantage of learners at different levels of education can really lead to desirable and satisfactory results. (My focus group discussion room at researchgate.net, Mar 16, 2016)

Due importance that Krushna had given to factors such as 'time' and 'relating the course to educational levels', could prove his degree of devotion to curricular assets as well. In his assertion, he referred to the volunteering presence of the participants with the interest and motivation on (Line 3) using 'voluntarily to collaborate', which this might have been indirectly reflecting the mutual understanding of the two colleagues from different departments though. In other words, he had extended psychological assets to just an awareness of curricular aspects of such courses. This should have still been taken as a clue for the responsibility of the two teachers to respect one another's' technical knowledge and understanding. In response to Krushna, I (the first researcher) alleged:

Thanks for your response Krushna. No doubt, team teaching has positive results however the thing that is yet not resolved is how best we can make a link between the two teachers. Realities are at times far removed from the ideal circumstances. (My focus group discussion room at researchgate.net, Mar 16, 2016)

In response to this declaration by the first researcher of the current study, Cherie claimed that it works best if the two teachers choose one another to cooperate instead of pairing up the two by the administrators. She emphasized:

Cherie:From my experience, the best team-teaching partnerships are formed when the participants choose each other. When people are paired up by administrators, with no thought for how well they get on, or whether they are really complementary or not, that is when problems often arise. It needs to be clear, too, that the partnership is an equal one. (My focus group discussion room at researchgate.net, Mar 16, 2016)

This avowal on the part of Cherie towards equal status of the two colleagues could not be restrained by the senior ship of one of them in terms of age. As she continued:

Cherie: Even when one teacher is a senior (in age) to the other, if one is a content teacher and the other a language teacher, they should view each other as having equal status, since they have different expertise and a specialized but mutually supportive role. (My focus group discussion room at researchgate.net, Mar 16, 2016)

Drawing on the curricular factors mentioned by Krushna as to allotting time to planning, she did not deny the impact of curricular factors cited by Krushna and stressed:

Cherie: It is important, too, to allow plenty of time for partners to plan together and reflect on lessons afterwards. There needs to be an understanding that both parties are committed to working together over the designated period, no walking away. (My focus group discussion room at researchgate.net, Mar 17, 2016)

Major Theme Line Two:Supremacy of English language knowledge over content knowledge

Reza from an Iranian university referred to the essential nature of collaboration where linguistic expertise according to him could be fortified by specific technicalities with subject teachers dominating ESP courses:

Reza:There has been a long-standing conflict over who should teach technical courses. The American traditions has introduced the adjunct model in which the language teacher and subject matter teacher cooperate to meet the target goals. As you have rightly observed, there is a strong possibility for cooperation, collaboration, and team teaching for handling an ESP/EAP course where linguistic expertise is fortified by clarification of technicalities and necessities dominating technical courses. (My focus group discussion room at researchgate.net, Mar 14, 2016)

He did not, however, specifically refer to how of cooperation regarding the second posed question on the page. He evidently mentioned adjunct models for ESP as a possible solution. Nidhal reported so many fruitful projects in her context in York university where English instructors had been much more prosperous compared with content teachers because of their linguistics knowledge:

Nidhal:Such courses are better taught by teachers of English because this material contains
special technical vocabulary and terminology which must be pronounced correctly. Sometimes teachers of specific material – though they are the masters in their specialization – yet their English might not be perfect, this is because their study in their major has been their mother tongue (Arabic, Indian, Chinese , French ….etc). Therefore, I recommend that teachers of English teach in ESP rather than the teachers of the material itself …(Ibid, Mar 17, 2016)

Among the responses, there were some scholars like Jyh- an English teacher in an EFL context in Singapore, who suggested educating subject matter specialists with language sciences to resolve language problems. He proposed knowledge of jargons, which might be intermingled with stylistic issues in report text genre which must be managed with an English teacher with an engineering degree. This was also interesting but the point that was vague to us was the feasibility of educating and training enough amount of teachers to be interested in self-promoting themselves by being indulged in two professional knowledge bases -ELT and engineering sciences- simultaneously. Aditi from an EFL background (Hong King) declared something like Jyh's claim above but with a different direction. She alleged that she knew many English teachers with good command of technical knowledge in her country. In principle, this could also be a thought-provoking topic in itself in finding the underlying reasons for such a situation. In a partial response to Jyh above, Kiran- an associate professor in Hindi literature- brought up a novel solution by stating an educational language development project in her context called "IDLTM", which stood for 'The International Diploma in Language Teaching Management'. She continued:

Kiran:Technical English courses in universities are taught by subject matter teacher but it can present challenges for even the most experienced educator. I D L T M (The International Diploma in Language Teaching Management) gives you the management tools to succeed in a new phase of your career. Its blended course which combines a two-week faceto-face component and six months of online work to provide the tools to help you succeed in language teaching management. (Ibid, Mar 14, 2016)

Promoting such projects within Iranian situation can surely be felt but, the feasibility of incorporating collateral expertise within those colleagues interested to gain such degrees with specific enthusiasm to solve language problems is still vague to perceive. Ali's assertion after Kiran's recommendation was so interesting for us to follow in that in many cases since different scholars had not been aware of one another's' specific knowledge and skills, co-teaching had failed in the past. He felt hope for the encouragement of such mutual understanding between the two teachers, though:

Ali:Clearly, some engagement with the subject discipline is essential to the development of an effective EAP course. At the minimum this should involve an understanding of the texts, tasks and forms of information delivery in the target course or discipline, and the use of tutors as informants on the literacy practices of their fields. More integrated forms of involvement are likely to bring further benefits and we are likely to see more of these pursued in the future, as content and EAP teachers gain
greater understanding of each other’s work and build up, over time, a working relationship of trust and respect.(Ibid, Mar, 16, 2016)

Scholars had so many for and against ideas in this regard. Namely, as another experience, Romero-a scholar from Mexico- claimed an attention-grabbing finding in this regard suggesting that it was better for content specialists to follow student-centered approaches where not the two teachers but the students themselves lead the course with language teacher supervision. Elaine, however rejected this and claimed that:

Elaine:For purely technical words and phrases, practitioners in the field can do an adequate job, but to teach students how to write reports or give papers in English or any other language, one has to use ESL teachers. The same is true of teaching students how to understand the speech at a conference. Knowing the meaning of individual lexical items is not sufficient for understanding oral or written discourse. (Ibid, Mar 19, 2016)

The debate was seemingly endless. The post by Daniela from an interdisciplinary department on Mar, 22^nd, 2016 about three or four days after the last posts by Romeo was conspicuous. In response to the first question as to the possibility of simultaneous co-presence of language and content teachers in ESP courses, she had mentioned that there could not have been any priority favoring content teachers in ESP courses and language teachers could be as efficient as the content teachers. She alleged that in EFL situations, the goals behind directing some courses such as Business English could be quite different from ESP courses in terms of 'aims', 'focus on
the language of delivery', as well as 'the content'. She saw the probable incompetency of the language teachers compared with content teachers in choosing the essential content for the course only. Here she felt the presence of content teachers as subject matter specialists was needed:

Daniela: However, in case the language teacher uses a prescribed textbook it is the aspect of content that might pose a problem, if the content of the textbook prescribed does not reflect the state-of-the-art information, or if it presents a simplified picture of the discipline under study. I personally believe in cooperation and in lifelong language teacher education and self-development in this respect. (Ibid, Mar 17, 2016)

She gave priority to the presence of the language teacher and the way out of the cited dilemmas such as content selection to this scholar, was 'life-long language teacher education' and 'self-development'. At this point, Daniela also narrated an experience she had had in leading a course for Economists in which some literacy aspects related to 'public speaking' as a crucial genre in academic arenas had been the aim and told us the rewards one gained could be just appreciating companionship with a group of people whose goals are enjoying work:

Daniela:I tried co-teaching once at our university in my courses in Rhetoric for Economists. The other teacher was my American colleague, who was a specialist in public speaking. We enjoyed this experience and so did our students. Of course, one should not expect any special bonus. Your bonus is that you belong to those very fortunate people for whom their work is their hobby. (Ibid, Mar 17, 2016)

Finally, she suggested it was better to devote this responsibility to both subject and language teachers but constant interaction is needed through interdisciplinary courses of action. In response to Daniela, Shahram opposed her by saying:

Shahram:'I viewed your interesting response Daniela, but there is some thing yet not clear; the problem of teaching ESP courses is: who is subject matter teacher? What certification does she/he have? At least in our universities, I am sure that ESP instructors in university do not have special training in teaching English and I doubt to say what grade they can get if they participate in language proficiency test. (Ibid, Mar 22, 2016)

He then narrated another story wherein he emphasized how subject matter teachers had just been involved in ESP courses in practicing 'translation' activities instead of improving Academic Literacy goals:

Shahram:The last time I faced with this problem was when my sister came to me and asked me to translate a piece of technical text into Persian. I asked what they do for English in Accounting Course and she answered the instructor or students read the text and translate orally into Persian. Does this kind of instruction need language teacher or subject matter teacher or anyone else? (Ibid, Mar 22, 2016)

Alexandra, another participant in this talk, referred to one of her experiences in a business English course wherein the presence of the two English and content teachers had been possible with language teachers screening the class procedures led by subject teachers:

Alexandra:'The French Institute from my town used this method in teaching French for Business years ago: language teachers were present in the classroom taught by subject matter teachers. In my opinion, simultaneous co-presence is not only possible in this case, but also necessary. In the case already mentioned, the specialist taught specialized vocabulary and the language teacher's role was to take care of the pronunciation and grammar mistakes made by the students during their oral production. (Ibid, Mar, 22, 2016)

In response to Shahram, Alexandra saw the presence of language teachers as pertinent for eradicating problems in communication but the problem here was that unfortunately within Iranian universities, ESP classes are hardly held in English due to the low proficiency levels of students (Atai & Nazari, 2011). Here, again the emphasis by this professor was communicative aspects of language teaching, but the more important side of her discussion pertained to the posed questions was that literacy aspects were not the goals here in Alexandra's words. Only dealing with surface level parts of the language has been put on the language specialist' shoulders.

At this point of our discussion, Romero again narrated another experience of his own in the middle school in Mexico, but since it was on collaborative issues, we quoted it here as another experience with expert views, which could be note-worthy in itself. He saw English instructors, him included, incapable in finding proper sources and alleged that language teachers are not apt for such courses:

Romero: … I taught World History, Geography and History of Mexico in English in a middle school in Mexico and despite it being middle-school, I had to spend massive amount of time brushing up on the content subjects and making meaningful and suitable material for the classes. Would I do it again? Probably not as I believe that a content teacher with a high command of the target language should be teaching topics and not an ELT Specialist. ( Ibid, Mar, 23, 2016)

He then continued that the job required of a teacher is for those courses, which need more true-to-life contents:

Romero:As for Business English, is it really a business class or is it an English class that uses published material that is aimed at no specific area. That I think and qualified ELT teacher can do. But to teach a topic related to a business BA is a whole new ball game. You should really think of the pros and cons of doing so. (Ibid, Mar, 23, 2016)

Finally, in response to Romero, Zane – a senior lecturer in Beirut- saw new situations as novel experiences for language teachers to move a self-growth path. She believed that although this situation might be embarrassing in that students might think we are not acquainted with their specialties and consider us as outsiders but this context can revealing in terms of invigorating our life-long learning. She also emphasized on a caution by which language teachers must not be relegated to an inferior status.

4.2. Response to Second Research Question:

Phase two: Content vs. language teacher debate among Iranian non-ELT experts

In a second attempt to explore expert views from the local context, the researchers made an inquiry to some colleagues in Iranian university settings. The researchers were mainly intended to know non-ELT colleagues' views in this regard. Three questions were delivered through a group administered strategy either through sending to their office rooms or with pre-arranged appointments:

Question no. 1: "If in English technical courses in our university, which are usually delivered to you as subject matter experts, language teachers as literacy experts are also allowed to be indulged, what contribution they could give to you?"

Question no. 2: "If such courses are managed as co-teaching with our cooperation, how can simultaneous co-presence of the two of us be possible?"

Question no. 3: "What niceties and intricacies might be involved if the aim of such courses be promoting academic essay-writing among students? What is your suggestion if intricacies arise?"

The questions were in Persian so that they could feel free in sending their views in Persian. Colleagues from three different departments were chosen to ensure diversity. Accordingly, department specialties including Humanities, Medicine, and Engineering sciences were invited. We have summarized colleagues' academic information who participated at this stage in table 3 below. Since in the interview with international scholars, other matters such as senior ship in terms of age and experience had also been considered pertinent, we also added these assets to the demographical info in table 3.For privacy reasons, since the responses sent to us at this second stage had been recorded as questionnaire data and not transferred via public pages such as the previous focus group discussion room, alphabetic letters were used instead for participants' names at this stage.

Table 3: Iranian Non-ELT Colleagues' Demographical Info.

We sent questions (1 to 3) to a good number of colleagues (no=10) from three different departments. From Humanities, we received two responses from Persian literature department, and one from Law department. From Engineering in the Food Science department, we received the most responses.

Having analyzed the responses through open coding, we assigned the delivered replies into some five major issues as open codes including:

 1) Aspects related to the niceties and intricacies of collaboration,

 2) Essentials of curricular planning,

 3) Managing ESP courses through research-based projects,

 4) Specific contribution of each teacher as implied in non-ELT colleagues

Since some codes were to some extent related to other aspects in terms of the major concerns over collaborative aspects of ESP courses, during axial coding stage, we also managed to divide some other assigned sub/codes into other subthemes through creative coding features of the software. Below, extracted themes are explicated in due course.

Major theme Line Three:Multidisciplinary nature of ELT

The first and foremost message, which could open and summarize the present discussion was this issue on the disciplinary nature of our works and practices. Participant C- a colleague from Persian literature- extended aspects to Humanities and asserted that in Literature, the manifestation of English language as a main medium for developing literacy skills and abilities was more sensible compared with other majors since literature was a universal medium through which human beings experience their world. In so doing, they construct meanings. Such meanings assigned by different people are different in different languages and only a technical knowledge by a literary expert can evoke their significance out of their contexts. Here, the close cooperation of the two teachers, in his view, was felt more but interpreting and signifying notions and underlying meanings had to be devoted to the experts in Literature. He also had brought a variety of rhetorical devices in Persian and Arabic through which men could make meaning. Here, one possible implication by his assertion could be that he felt short of evoking these hidden meanings via the medium of English language and in so doing, collaboration in his view only focused on translation aspects of teaching to be accomplished by language teachers and the rest should be in his control as a subject teacher. Even in this limited role he was citing for an English language, he believed that if a professor with literature specialty knows English as well he can better manage teaching, translating and writing about it.

Major Theme Line Four:Pedagogical rings to collaboration: Niceties and Constraints

The pedagogical aspects of our profession in ELT was not known to other professors as so many evidences in this research showed. The thing that was interesting for us at this stage was how pedagogical knowledge of language teachers in managing Iranian ESP courses had been overlooked to the whole. Looking for these pedagogical aspects as to curricular issues, we continued reading the responses. Among the issued ideas, we noticed some of our colleagues had mentioned essentials of team teaching such as issues of time, preparation, collaboration in designing a common syllabus etc. These were not new to us within educational concerns that any teacher might have. We tried to make sense of theses aspects for our goals to see what problems might have been involved and what niceties might have complicated the issues in considering these pedagogical rings to the ESP classes. Within responses, some mentioned time as a constraint since it might have restricted teachers in coming to a compromise over the aims of the course. They all focused on this fact that preparation is the only solution. And through pre-setting these goals, everything could be in its own position during the management of the course. The thing that had not been noted by these colleagues of mine was the contested and iterative nature of language teaching practices. As it has also been mentioned during the second phase of the present project, we reported how everything was changing all the time and preparing this pre-set syllabus could be a critical issue in itself. Definitely, they meant cooperation could become possible through setting goals beforehand, but the crucial problem that this cooperative practice might create was seeing the unexpected events during the teaching cycles if divided between the two teachers. In the larger scale study from this this research was extracted, we resolved this issue to a certain extent by bringing another human element to this collaboration: ESP students. We did not like co-presence of the two teachers because such constraints would rarely happen in our classes. Clashes were eliminated, and the cooperation was not owned by two dominating agents in the course. This sense of cooperation by the more dominating of one of the two (content vs. language) teachers was replaced with a Tripartite framework that put our ESP students on top as even the more prominent elements in the community of practice notions promoted by recent socio-cultural scholars such as by Lave and Wenger (1991).

Another assigned open code in the worksheet was the niceties of collaborative practices in ESP courses. Eight segments in this code were clue for the positive views over the mere cooperation itself. I tracked the nature of this cooperation through linking this code to other assigned codes I had created in my creative work sheet including the contribution of the two teachers, which in themselves could be linked to other aspects to their views. Below, I have elaborated on this issue as well. Colleagues' views on the particulars of cooperation in Figure 1 are displayed related to the niceties of collaborative practices as such.

           Figure 1: Assigned Codes On Nictitates of Collaborative ESP in Non-ELT Experts' Views

Regarding the niceties of having collaborative team teaching in ESP courses, participants A, C, D and G issued their positive points. Since the output summary table did not let the participant no. view, I have to clarify that the first three sectors are related to participant C, sector four belongs to percipient G, the next three sectors to Participant A (5-7) and the last sector belongs to participant D.

Participant C, an expert in Literature studies believed that cooperation of the two teachers is possible through mutual understanding of human affairs who are indulged in literary works. At the outset, he argued, this cooperation has been initiated from a unique source- by partners who are all human beings. Participant G put an emphasis on this cooperation by separating the jobs between the two teachers. To his view, "Grammatical knowledge and "Reading Comprehension" are just the two specialties that must be devoted to language teachers.

Participant A believed that through cooperation and consultation of the two teachers with one another, differences between the two languages could get bold scientifically otherwise, the result is ‘either a catastrophe or a comedy’, as his verbatim assertion denoted. Here, the contribution of a language teacher in this cooperative practices was contingent upon knowing the differences between languages. Participant D just emphasized the mere nature of teamwork, but he did not specify ways and means of such cooperation.

As clear, another link could be seen associated with the niceties of collaborative ESP drawing on the contribution they felt as necessary from themselves. Two views were in the limelight in this relationship, which was noteworthy for my goals as to essay-writing. One point had been made by participant D remarking that essay-writing instructions must be devoted to content teachers but the basics of writing in English language to English teachers. This view by participant D in Food Science was similar to participant C in the previous section in that technicality concerns might not make a language teacher apt for this job. A noteworthy suggestion here could be that indulging in the course, language teachers could act as leaders to teach the nuances of general principles in essay-writing, and the technicality issues can be consulted with a content teacher without the direct presence of the subject matter teachers in actual classes. As participant D himself approved this by saying that content teachers can teach the formatting of the articles in English. It seemed that here they saw a less important role in this regard for content teachers compared with language experts.

At Iranian academic settings, one route for 'zest for knowing' may be sought through the medium of English for Specific purposes (ESP) courses (Akin, 2005; Gee, 2007; Paltridge & Wang, 2011; Street, 2013; Turner, 2012) where it is essential for the learners to use the language for some specific purposes such as doing research and publishing their ideas in the wider international contexts through collaborative panels. In Iranian settings, the situation, thus far, has been far from satisfactory since teamwork as such is either non-existent or being set on unrealistic goals; consequently, it has seemingly led to unacceptable outcomes (Mazdayasna & Tahririan, 2008).

Among the other responses in this regard, participant B as an expert in Law, saw another role in this cooperation for the language teachers emphasizing the oral communicative skills. He saw himself as the knower of legal matters and alleged that by including international information on legal issues, a content teacher could contribute to the discussions made in class as the experience he had had in his PhD program regarding "legal texts". The role he assigned for language teachers was just transferring the information from Persian to English and vice versa. In my opinion, this part of the technical knowledge could come from the students by content teachers acting as indirect consultants. The point that had less been noted by this professor was that the sole role of language teacher was more than acting as a translator of ideas. In line with academic literacy aims in recent eras, the point that had been overlooked by this professor was promoting argumentative skills of learners, liberating students of being consumers of knowledge toward producers of knowledge and information, upgrading literacy aspects from words toward creating worlds from which words could flourish and the like. With these recent concerns, in my opinion, the majority of the interviewed professors in my teaching context as outsiders of ELT domains were unacquainted. If they could be informed of my specialties, they would surely change their views in giving me such a limited role. This was also so disappointing for me to know one of colleagues alleged that in our Iranian situation cooperative works are impossible unless they really desire to do so by heart as the success by Iranian National Volleyball team had depicted before Nowrouz 1395. The inter-relationship of the discussed issues is seen in Fig. 2 below.

Figure 2: A Scanned Image of the Creative Coding Regarding ESP Collaborative as to My In-House Non-ELT Experts

The responses communicated here were all in line with different aspects of collaboration as clear in Fig. 2 Among the responses, contribution of content teachers had been shown to be on various strands like focusing communicative aspects in ESP courses, which itself could bring about collaborative problems in our Iranian situation as mentioned by some colleagues and denoted as a constraint by some (3 views) but seen as practical by some colleagues (2 views). Regarding the contribution of a language teachers, essentials of curriculum particulars were mentioned as constraints by some (4 views), but eight views were signs for the niceties of such a collaboration for the reasons mentioned in the previous section.

In sum, all factors which could have facilitate or on the other hand inhibit collaboration between the two language and content teachers had been sought on various levels including interactional as well as curricular issues according to the views gained by non-ELT experts above (otherwise included in subject matter campaigns). D’Amour (1997) also meant this by classifying the underlying factors in structuring inter-professional collaboration. "Interactional" factors as in interpersonal relationships and "organizational" factors, which, to the author's view, were realized by means of regular work as in mechanisms were cited in an intricate network leading to three types of trust between and among language and content teachers involving 1) Anticipatory trust, 2) Evocative trust, and 3) Responsive trust. By anticipatory trust, the author meant faith in others through which attempts could be directed towards ways favorable to the interests for the two sides involved. In Evocative kind of trust, individuals involved in a collaborative practice (e.g., teachers) could expect that their trust in each other would surely work for them and in a way is reciprocated. Finally, in the third type, individuals (e.g. ESL teachers) entrust to other individuals (e.g. Content Area teachers) and would expect some positive outcome in their instructions to be flourished by means of collaboration for the students. In this model, students themselves have not been taken into consideration in that how they can facilitate such an intricate network that works based on trust and conviction. Before I elaborate on the final data collection section on students' views over the collaborative practices, I like to cite a recently proposed interactive EAP model suggested by Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, (2017). This model, otherwise termed as the 'Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol' (SIOP) by the authors, is mainly based on creating a collaborative practice by scaffolding the instructional phases for language learners. In this model, students have been focused upon as target objects that need to seek help from their teachers (both content and language) but the tri-partite model I explicated in my weaved syllabus, students themselves are agents to change their worlds. In so doing, they seek help from the two teachers and cause collaboration to take place in effect.

5. Conclusion and Implications

In this research, an attempt was made to find our ground for a possible cooperative behavior between and among language and content teachers at tertiary level. Three groups of university activists including International Content university teachers, International ELT university lecturers and Iranian Content university professors participated in a discussion group on research gate site and also another phase was followed through a written interview inquiry. International participants took part in the discussion group and Iranian university lecturers responded to a written questionnaire. This was to illuminate their views over the nature of collaboration so that English language teachers’/university professors gain a glare of publicity in EAP courses, in which they are relatively seen in the dark. After seeking though diverse roles to English language teachers/professors in the existing literature, some nine roles were detected comprising 1) Arbitrators in legal writing pedagogy, 2) Counselors via professional development, 3) Communication consultants in English lecture-led classes 4) Discourse analysts for material designing aims, 5) Mentors for disciplinary writing, 6) Team teaching partners, 7) Translators and/or interpreters, 8) Transformative practitioners, and finally 9) Vocational trainers.

Four major theme lines including 1) Need for a positive personal relation between language and subject matter teachers, 2) Supremacy of English language knowledge over content knowledge, 3) Multidisciplinary nature of ELT, and finally 4) Pedagogical rings to collaboration: Niceties and Constraints could prove that among teachers within both international and local participant groups, collaboration could still be tracked and charted though in the international centers, nuances of collaboration were better sued by EAP/ESP practitioners.

5.1. Implications of the Study

In a nutshell, data gained from the joint talk lines and the two questionnaires demonstrated that in many cases, Iranian ELT practitioners inside the country believed in collaborative practices, but they found it so hard to create such a situation due to educational structures in the national curriculum. Non-ELT teachers inside the country also constantly talked about two separate expertise on their own parts, which did not include language teachers as legitimate colleagues of their own in such courses. Across outside borders, the situation was far more satisfactory and showing a more optimum coopetition of language and content teachers. Besides the views extracted from non-Iranian university professors in this study, some research studies in which possible lines of collaboration had been suggested through extra-curricular, innovative practices along content-based instruction in diverse settings were outperforming over the local ones.

In the rest of the explored research papers and documents, it was mostly noted that solidifying or strengthening collaboration had been felt or discerned as crucial provided with rigorous descriptions of different research contexts, but how of sustaining the cooperation remained vague to interpret how a language teacher had not been specifically viewed compared with a subject matter teacher (Aliasin & Pouyan, 2014; Butler, Novak Lauscher, Jarvis-Selinger, and Beckingham, 2004; Davoudi-Mobarakeh, Eslami-Rasekh, & Barati,2014; Kutsyuruba, 2011; Leung, 2005; Xu, 2015). In this case, this research might somehow fill in the gap in bringing an essential research line for a likely optimistic role of English language professors/instructors in EAP errands in our country.

5.2. Suggestions for Further Research

The ESP/EAP story in our country still suffers from another link, which is determined by students’ roles in such courses. Through interactive EAP models, students ought to be surveyed in that how they could be focused upon as target objects that need to seek help from their teachers (both content and language). In the larger study from which this present study was extracted, a tri-partite model in which students had a main role as agents to change their worlds, this errand was surveyed but through a short semester. In so doing, in their case, they sought help from the two teachers and caused collaboration to take place in effect. Such collaborative attempts to take effect still needs to be checked in terms of practicality through further needs analysis endeavors by prospective researchers in our country. It is hoped that future scholars take this role by students very seriously and focus on the possible challenges in this field in order to improve EAP teaching models in our country and designate what Iranian EAP models should involve with the help of students as well. Also, in this study the views by English language instructors who were indulged in ESP courses were less focused which should be reminded to forthcoming researchers to also consider their views for how of linking students’ roles to their collaborative rehearsals.

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