Language Teaching Research Quarterly

Language teaching has the potential not only to teach language skills but also to create a peaceful learning environment where students feel relaxed, safe and valued. To achieve this goal, teachers need to develop an ideal identity that reflects their commitment to promoting peace in their classrooms. In the interest of developing peacebuilder language teachers, this study investigated the ideal identity of English language teachers as peacebuilders, the strategies they employ to achieve their peacebuilder identities, and the manifestation of peace language: hope, help, and harmony (Oxford & Curtis, 2020). The narratives of three Iranian language teachers were thematically analyzed to understand their hopeful, helpful, and harmonious experiences. Our findings indicate that teachers’ ideal peacebuilder selves are becoming ‘an encouraging teacher’, ‘a more hopeful and caring teacher’, and ‘a patient teacher’. To achieve their peacebuilder identity, they proposed strategies such as encouraging students to communicate internationally, caring about students’ success, pursuing academic studies, and improving emotion-regulation skills. The findings of this study contribute to incorporating peace in language education and developing peacebuilder language.