Investigating the English Language Teachers’ Ethical Characteristics with Regard to the Students’ Degree of Religiousness

The purpose of this study was to investigate the students’ perceptions of the language teachers’ ethical characteristics with regard to the students’ degree of religiousness. An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was employed. First, a religiosity scale questionnaire was adapted to categorize 81 students into more or less religious groups. Its reliability was computed by Cronbach’s alpha. From among the 53 students of English Translation in two universities in Qom completing the questionnaire, 22 of them agreed to participate in a semi-structured interview which was validated by experts in the fields of ethics and moral philosophy. After repeated analyses of the codes of the students’ interviews, one major theme (sincerity) was identified and then cross-checked with regard to the students’ degree of religiousness via chi-square and Fisher’s exact tests. Finally, a network of language teachers’ ethical characteristics was contemplated based on sincerity which was presented by the students to be the most important moral trait of language teachers. Research of this nature could be utilized in planning a code of ethics, particularly designed for language educators.