This article explores the complex interrelationships between language and culture, between teachers' sociocultural identities and teaching practices, and between their explicit discussions of culture and implicit modes of cultural transmission in their classes. A 6‐month ethnographic study examined how teachers deal with institutional and curricular expectations regarding their teaching of (North American) culture in their EFL classrooms in a postsecondary institution in Japan. The study also explored the teachers' changing understandings of what constitutes culture and of how they viewed themselves in terms of their various social and cultural roles. Common themes included (a) the complexities and paradoxes associated with teachers' professional, social, political, and cultural identities and their (re)presentation of these in class; (b) their quest for interpersonal and intercultural connection in that EFL context; (c) their desire for educational (and personal) control in the face of contested cultural practices; and (d) disjunctures between teachers' implicit and explicit messages in relation to their cultural understandings and practices. We discuss these themes and make recommendations for teacher education purposes. We argue that the cultural underpinnings of language curricula and teaching must be examined further, particularly so in intercultural situations in which participants are negotiating their sociocultural identities as well as the curriculum.

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