The Lived Experience of Arabic Language Teachers in Creating Dialogic Spaces

Despite the growing emphasis on meaning-oriented and communicative approaches, Arabic language classrooms in universities and schools often remain shaped by rigid, text-centered, and non-dialogic instructional frameworks. These traditional methods undermine teachers’ professional identities and restrict students’ opportunities to experience authentic presence, participation, and meaning-making. This study phenomenologically explored Arabic language teachers’ lived experiences of creating dialogic spaces and examined the possibility of implementing existential education at Farhangian University and in public schools.

Using a qualitative approach grounded in philosophical hermeneutics and interpretive phenomenology, the study investigated the meaning of this phenomenon from teachers’ perspectives. Participants included seven Arabic language instructors at Farhangian University and five schoolteachers who held doctoral degrees and had university-level teaching experience. Their teaching experience ranged from five to thirty years. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), following the approach developed by Smith and colleagues.

The analysis identified five overarching themes: the tension between rigid educational structures and the desire for dialogue; the reconceptualization of the teacher’s role as an existential co-traveler; the transformation of the teacher–student relationship from mere knowledge transmission toward shared understanding; the emergence of the classroom as a space for unfolding existential possibilities; and liberation from textual dominance through the revitalization of language as living discourse.

The findings indicate that dialogic spaces are not merely pedagogical techniques or instructional strategies but embody a particular way of being in the classroom. They create conditions for students’ voices to be heard, teachers’ identities to develop, and shared meaning to emerge. Drawing on existential education associated with Heidegger and Bakhtin, the study concludes that existential education is possible in Arabic classrooms, provided that the dialogic relationship among the teacher, student, and text is fundamentally reconfigured.