“I feel secure, happy, and peaceful when my teacher implements justice in class”: a study of how Iranian EFL learners perceive and respond to teacher classroom justice

Students’ perceptions and reactions to their teachers’ classroom justice behaviors have been studied in general education and communication education. However, despite the crucial role of teachers’ just and fair behavior in second or foreign language (L2) classrooms, there is a shortage of research in this area. Fair treatment by L2 teachers plays a key role in teachers’ professional effectiveness and their students’ attainment of desirable emotional and academic outcomes. To mitigate this research caveat, this qualitative study with a phenomenological research design explored 55 Iranian EFL undergraduates’ perceptions of and emotional responses to their lived experiences of teacher justice in university EFL classes. Employing the critical incident technique (CIT), the researchers obtained the students’ incidents by asking them to answer the open-ended prompts. Inductive thematic analysis of the data in MAXQDA revealed two main findings: (1) All students approved that teacher justice is important for observing students’ rights, enhancing students’ academic and emotional outcomes, promoting the effectiveness of the education system and teacher, and improving the interpersonal aspect of classroom; (2) Students showed a range of emotionally positive reactions to the perceived enactment of teacher justice in the classroom. For instance, they felt peaceful when teacher justice decreased their anxiety and stress and enhanced their emotional trust and well-being; happy when teacher justice facilitated a fulfilling and engaging learning atmosphere; and secure when the teacher graded them fairly, acknowledged their rights, and allocated equal attention to them. All these demonstrate that teachers maintaining interpersonal and emotional ties with students (i.e., teacher interactional justice) was a priority for Iranian EFL students. This research has brought to the spotlight the essentiality of EFL teachers running classes to help students better appreciate the lesson and attain more fulfilling emotional and academic experiences.