With the changing world and accordingly novelties in ELT, the role of an English language teacher is inevitably developing as well. What is central here is to consider whether the theoretically idealized changes in teachers’ roles find its place in practice or not. In today’s world, it is not enough to have only knowledge; individuals are also expected to be critical thinkers, problem-solvers and change-agents. Organic systems- as an innovative organizational structure- necessitate teachers to reflect upon their practice and act as change agents besides transmitting knowledge; in this way, teachers are more likely to help to raise students’ awareness and contribute to enabling personal empowerment. Thus, it is highly critical to know staff structure in terms of the role they perform if an institution wants to adopt innovations. As part of the doctoral study examining the effect of institutional factors on language curriculum development, the changing roles of English teachers as perceived by the teachers themselves will be highlighted here. The study is the result of a descriptive research. Quantitative method was used in the process of collecting data; the data were obtained through a questionnaire, which makes the research ‘a survey research’. The type of the survey is ‘cross-sectional’ as the data were collected at one point in time. The research was carried out with the lecturers and the administrators working in English preparatory divisions of 5 public and 7 private universities in Istanbul. From these universities 342 teachers, 19 of whom are administrators- directors or assistant directors or coordinators of English Divisions in these institutions- answered the questionnaires in the academic year of 2010-2011. The results of the questionnaires were estimated through SPSS program. In this study, through participating lecturers’ perceptions revealed through the responses they gave to the statements in Likert-type scale, the current role/s teachers perform will be investigated and discussed. The roles teachers perform are categorized and intended to be analyzed in three items: teachers who only transmit the content knowledge, teachers who reflect upon their practice, and teachers who work as change agents. The results indicate that most of the teachers still maintain the role of conveying content knowledge; furthermore, they also reflect upon their practice looking back critically; however, not many teachers can be identified to be social agents, yet. Following the evaluation of the statistical results, the study ends with the discussion of the ways of keeping up with the innovations via leading teachers to perform roles in parallel with what is required by the latest movements in the field.