A comparative investigation of educational department teacher's perceptions of learning and teaching challenges of English and Arabic languages in Iran: A grounded theory study

The aim of this qualitative study was to apply the grounded theory methodology to a comparative investigation of the challenges and problems of teaching and learning English and Arabic in Iranian high schools. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with five English teachers and seven Arabic teachers who were theoretically sampled from different high schools in Sabzevar, Iran. Using MAXQDA software, the data were analyzed based on the three levels of open, axial, and selective coding in grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). Two models of challenges of teaching and learning of English and Arabic was posited with the problems of teaching and learning of English and Arabic as the core category and teacher, student, and educational facilities as sub-categories. The findings of this study shows that in spite of some differences between these two languages in terms of problems of their teaching and learning, there are some similarities between them. Also, some pedagogical implications for teachers, students, and curriculum developers were discussed in this study.