Democracy in EFL classrooms

Abstract

In the simplest term, democracy may be defined as a set of views and standards towards freedom, however it includes an array of approaches which have been framed over the history of mankind. In short, democracy is the systematized form of freedom. A democratic country is not possible without the freedom of expression. Freedom of expression fosters publics to clearly put forward their demands on how the authorities should perform their duties. Thus, this study inquires the visionary underpinnings of third persons in a phenomenological custom. The data of the study were gathered through a questionnaire designed by Yildirim and Türkoğlu (2017) and semi-structured interview questions structured by the researchers. Through a mix method research design, this paper employed both qualitative and quantitative ways to collect the required data. 180 EFL prep-class students at a state university in Turkey participated in the study. 160 of the informants responded to the questionnaire while 20 informants answered the semi-structured interview questions. Convenience sampling, where the very first accessible data is employed, was utilized in the study. The findings of the study show that the need of democratic participation is felt in EFL classrooms. Related implications to raise the awareness of EFL students and teachers on democracy and democratic citizenship were given at the end of the paper.

Keywords

• democracy; democratic citizenship; attitudes; EFL

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