Paper Title
Teachers’ Social Identity and Teaching Materials

Abstract
The nature of language teachers’ identity is conceptualized in many studies as “a process of continual emerging and becoming” (Miller, 2009, p.173). This identify including social, ethical, cultural, linguistic, sociocultural identity, is shaped during the profession as the result of different factors. The current study focuses on the language course books used as the main teaching material. It is assumed that the teachers who are teaching languages are influenced by the culture and social aspects of the books. To conduct the present study, three English course books, widely used in Iran, are analyzed based on the framework proposed by Phillipson and also Kachru’s inner, outer and expanding circles to investigate the content of the course books. Then twenty teachers who teach the books are interviewed to analyze their perspectives to the English culture. The results reveals that there are three main groups of teachers in this regard: those who are acculturated and their identity is totally influenced by the material, those who are resistant to the new culture and even try to avoid it, and finally those who try to keep the balance and see both their native and the other culture and be more critical. Bringing the obtained results into practice, teachers’ awareness can be increased in teacher education courses to help them shape the identity with more wisely. Index Terms - Teachers’ identity, Culture, Teaching materials