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This study investigated the nature of EFL teacher education programs with respect to implementation, practicality, and approach to teacher learning. The data were collected through observation of two teacher education programs and interviews with 8 teacher trainers. The results attested to the transmission orientation of the programs. It was found that a pre-specified body of teaching knowledge is transferred from the trainers to the teachers. Teachers’ creativity, prior knowledge, and experience, the role of teaching context, and the population of learners are not considered in program development. The results of interviews with teacher trainers supported the results of the observations. It was found that even the trainers are not involved in the process of program development, as they are only transmitting the materials presented by textbook authors. The findings also indicated that what teachers considered beneficial for their development was different from what was incorporated in the programs. The existing gap between macro plans and teachers’ practices and preferences results from the centralized education system in Iran in which practicing teachers are not involved in the policy-making process. Implications for teacher education in general and EFL teacher education programs in particular are discussed.

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The aim of this qualitative study is to explore the role of the micropolitics of schools for gifted students in the EFL teachers’ professional interests in the workplace. Results of interviews revealed that to establish their professional interests, teachers involved in conflict and rivalry as well as collaboration and coalition. Furthermore, teachers’ micropolitical actions were interrelated with their efficacy beliefs. Self-interests such as public recognition and high visibility were sought as they provided a positive feedback on teachers’ professional behavior and substantiated their efficacy. Material interests such as the use of the smart boards, the Internet, and extra resources were further means through which they could present their informed and efficacious character to others. Organizational interests also confirmed teachers’ efficacy since only effective teachers were recruited in schools for gifted students. Teachers’ social interests achieved through developing affinity and rapport with others, particularly the principals, were the prerequisite for the establishment of all other professional interests. The findings were discussed with reference to the importance of fostering micropolitical literacy and the effect of information on school micropolitics on teachers’ ability to develop appropriate coping strategies.

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Professionalism requires that language teachers be assessment literate so as to assess students’ performance more effectively. However, assessment literacy (AL) has remained a relatively unexplored area. Given the centrality of AL in educational settings, in the present study, we identified the factors constituting AL among university instructors and examined the ways English Language Instructors (ELIs) and Content Instructors (CIs) differed on AL. A researcher-made, 50-item questionnaire was constructed and administered to both groups: ELIs (N = 155) and CIs (N = 155). A follow-up interview was conducted to validate the findings. IBM SPSS (version 21) was used to analyse the data quantitatively. Results of exploratory factor analysis showed that AL included three factors: theoretical dimension of testing, test construction and analysis, and statistical knowledge. Further, results revealed statistically significant differences between ELIs and CIs in AL. Qualitative results showed that the differences were primarily related to the amount of training in assessment, methods of evaluation, purpose of assessment, and familiarity with psychometric properties of tests. Building on these findings, we discuss implications for teachers’ professional development.

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Performance assessment is exceedingly considered a key concept in teacher education programs worldwide. Accordingly, in Iran, a national assessment system was proposed by Farhangian University to assess the professional competencies of its ELT graduates. The concerns regarding the validity and authenticity of traditional measures of teachers' competencies have motivated us to devise a localized performance assessment scheme. Therefore, the present study aimed to develop a performance assessment scheme to be used as a benchmark for assessing the professional competencies of ELT graduates of this university. To this end, three assessment tasks and rating scales were developed, piloted, and administered. Next, Haertel's participatory approach was employed to set passing standards for the assessment tasks as well as the whole assessment scheme. Analysis of the data revealed inter-rater and intra-rater reliability coefficients of 0.85 and 0.89. The validity of the assessment scheme was also confirmed by experts' judgments made, to a large extent, on the correspondence between the target domain and test domain skills. Based on the results, the proposed assessment scheme is rendered more efficient and reliable in comparison to traditional tests with regard to the following dimensions: a) higher degrees of reliability and validity of the assessment scheme aimed at the improvement of licensure and program development; b) stronger evidence for inter-/intra- rater reliability and consistency of scoring; and c) an optimized and systematic procedure for setting passing standards based on the consensus of experts' judgments. It is believed that further development of the proposed assessment scheme unlocks its potential to be used as a large-scale teacher assessment model for Farhangian University.

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This study aims at investigating the effect of dynamic assessment (DA) on L2 writing achievement if applied via blogging as a Web 2.0 tool, as well as examining which pattern of interaction is more conducive to learning in such an environment. The results of the study indicate that using weblogs to provide mediation contributes to the enhancement of the overall writing performance, vocabulary and syntactic complexity, and quantity of overall information presented in a single paragraph. That is to say, DA procedures are applicable via Web 2.0 tools and are advantageous to L2 learners’ writing suggesting that L2 practitioners and instructors should actively consider the integration of Web 2.0 technology into L2 education system using DA. Moreover, the collaborative pattern of interaction as compared to expert/novice, dominant/passive, and dominant/dominant patterns is found to be more conducive to fostering writing achievement in the asynchronous computer-mediated communication environment.

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The present study explored the effect of a pedagogical blog on Iranian EFL learners’ creative and critical thinking skills using a mixed-methods approach. In the pedagogical blog, the researchers asked learners divergent and evaluative questions based on Lindley’s model (1993). The quantitative data were collected by administering Creativity Test Questionnaire (ATC) and the Persian version of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test and were analyzed using SPSS Version 16.0 software. The qualitative data consisted of the posts written by the participants of the study in the class blog and were analyzed using thematic analysis.  The findings revealed that the pedagogical blog significantly improved the participants’ creative and critical thinking skills, which were represented in their posts by the main themes of fluency, elaboration, and flexibility as components of divergent thinking and inference, evaluation, induction, and reconstruction as features of open and active critical thinking skills. Further findings and implications are discussed in the paper.

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Initiation into contextualizing mindful second language teacher education (SLTE) has challenged teacher educators causing their retreat into mindless submission to ready-made standardized directives. To revive the starting perspective in curriculum development in light of the recent trend towards responsive SLTE, this practitioner research investigated how the context was incorporated into the initial program phase. We reported an intrinsic case self-study narrating the contextualization events unfolded in the first five sessions of an English language teacher education program in Karaj, Iran. Selected factors guided data mining in an interview, classroom interaction transcripts, reflective tasks, institutional documents, and the teacher educator’s journal entries and recollections.  The data underwent meaning-oriented, temporally sequenced content analysis. We redrafted the resulting narrative after member checking, and critical reviews.  Afterwards, we conducted a layered context-bound thematic analysis on the big story followed by further theme analysis of the existing and emerging facets of adaptive expertise.  Engagement in this narrative inquiry developed awareness of her practices and professional agency, constraints and affordances within the context of SLTE program.  The findings extend narrative knowledging to the wider professional community of SLTE.

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Many studies have examined the effect of different approaches to teaching grammar including explicit and implicit instruction. However, research in this area is limited in a number of respects. One such limitation pertains to the issue of construct validity of the measures, i.e. the knowledge developed through implicit instruction has been measured through instruments which favor the recipients of explicit instruction. The present study expands on the previous studies by exploring the effectiveness of explicit and implicit instructions through administering a timed GJT and an untimed GJT. Data were collected from three different groups: (a) the explicit group was presented with rules of verb complementation, (b) the implicit group received visually enhanced texts, and (c) the control group received no instruction of the target feature. The results of the mixed between-within subjects ANOVA test revealed that the learners in explicit group outperformed the learners in implicit and control groups in post-tests and delayed post-tests even in the case of the implicit measure. Furthermore, the results indicated the more durable effects of explicit instruction compared with implicit instruction. Taken together, the study provided evidence for the efficiency of explicit teaching compared to implicit teaching in the context of L2 development.

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Although the use of verbal protocols is growing in oral assessment, research on the use of raters’ verbal protocols is rather rare. Moreover, those few studies did not use a mixed-methods design. Therefore, this study investigated the possible impacts of rater training on novice and experienced raters’ application of a specified set of standards in rating. To meet this objective, the study made use of verbal protocols produced by 20 raters who scored 300 test takers’ oral performances and analyzed the data both qualitatively and quantitatively. The outcomes demonstrated that through applying the training program, the raters were able to concentrate more on linguistic, discourse, and phonological features; therefore, the extent of their agreement increased specifically among the inexperienced raters. The analysis of verbal protocols also revealed that training how to apply a well-defined rating scale can foster its use for raters both validly and reliably. Various groups of raters approach the task of rating in different ways, which cannot be explored through pure statistical analysis. Thus, think-aloud verbal protocols can shed light on the vague sides of the issue and add to the validity of oral language assessment. Moreover, since the results of this study showed that inexperienced raters can produce protocols of higher quality and quantity in the use of macro and micro strategies to evaluate test takers’ performances, there is no evidence based on which decision makers should exclude inexperienced raters solely because of their lack of adequate experience.

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Despite the abundance of research on teachers’ repair practices in language classroom interaction, there are not enough conversation analytic studies on repair organization with the focus on the details of interaction in the context of EFL. Drawing on sociocultural and situated learning theories, this study explores the contingent nature of English language teachers’ organizational patterns of repair practices (repair focus, repair completion, repair trajectory and convergence) by adopting the context-dependency of repair as a point of departure. More specifically, we analyzed two classroom interactional contexts: form-oriented and meaning-oriented contexts as well as their realization in student participation. Data were collected through video- and audio-tape recordings of 14 lessons from eight EFL teachers at four private language institutes in Iran and they were analyzed based on the framework of conversation analysis methodology. The analysis of lesson transcripts indicated that the teachers varied in their repair practices; however, an organizational repair pattern emerged from the data. The analysis of qualitative data revealed that the teachers largely repaired divergently in form-oriented contexts but convergently in meaning-oriented contexts, and deployed other-repair more than self-repair. The pedagogical implications of the study are for language teachers’ awareness of the role of repair organization in facilitating learning opportunities and for teachers’ professional development.

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Pre-service teacher cognition literature abounds with the concept of change as well as proposals regarding desirable conceptual changes to be undertaken so that teacher candidates can set out their path of professional development with right beliefs. Yet, such changes would seem less likely to occur if the trainees’ thoughts, beliefs, and cognitions are not identified in the first place. This study was an attempt to identify the cognitions of EFL pre-service teachers and trace possible changes expressed by the candidates. Through a convenient sample of 64 pre-service teachers studying at three teacher training colleges in Iran, this mixed -methods exploration utilized a teacher cognition questionnaire and interview techniques. Results of the cognition questionnaire indicated that many of the candidates’ cognitions were still in need of adjustments. Also, the content analysis of the interviews revealed that the candidates’ attempts during the practicum revolved mostly around challenging debilitating beliefs, developing a sense of professional agency, managing stress, and resolving tensions between contradicting beliefs. Findings suggest that the trainees’ prior experiences as language learners exerted a very influential effect on their cognitions and also their attempts to refine those cognitions.

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This study aimed to compare the underlying measures of male and female high- school students’ social capital in terms of regional variations and gender and investigate the relationship between those measures and the students' foreign language (FL) achievement. To this end, a number of 904 third-grader high school students (278 male and 626 female) from two educational districts (privileged district (PD) and less-privileged district (LD)) participated in the study. They filled out the Student Social Capital Questionnaire and took an English language achievement test. The results showed that the students in the PD outperformed their counterparts in the LD. Furthermore, group statistics and t-test results suggested variations among the groups of students in terms of such factors as mothers’ involvement, institutional trust, intergenerational closure, and parents’ educational aspiration. Pearson product-moment correlation indicated that there was a significant negative correlation between male and female students' participation in social networks and religious activities on the one hand, and their foreign language achievement on the other hand. However, there was a significant positive correlation between intergenerational closure and parents’ educational aspiration and female students' English scores on the S-test. The findings have implications for families and school members to provide students with hopeful and positive aspirations and intimate family environments and learning environments, which can enhance their FL achievement.

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This paper focuses on the impact of an asynchronous online discussion forum on the development of students’ ability in and attitudes toward writing in English. Two groups of third-year students (N = 60) majoring in English were assigned to two treatment and control groups, each receiving different types of feedback. Students in the treatment group were required to participate in an online learning environment and exchange feedback with their peers, whereas students in the control group received the traditional face-to-face feedback provided by the teacher. The results of a pre-test, a post-test, and a survey revealed that students’ writing in the treatment group significantly improved, both semantically and syntactically, and they expressed more positive attitudes toward writing. The findings also indicated that as a result of engaging in the asynchronous online discussion forum and exchanging feedback with peers, students exhibited more control over their work, involved more effectively with the learning tasks, collaborated more with their classmates, and employed self-assessment strategies to independently revise or rewrite their work. The implications of the study offer guidelines to improve and facilitate writing skill in EFL contexts.

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In their attempt to shed light on the factors contributing to the incongruity between L2 reading teachers’ beliefs and practices, most of the researchers have resorted to teachers’ personal perspectives. As a partial replication of the research carried out by Karimi and Dehghani (2016), the current study sought to broaden this restricted scope by examining the role of teacher education in shaping L2 reading teachers’ beliefs/practices. Data were collected from 84 L2 reading teachers through a survey and follow-up classroom observations. Overall, both undergraduate and graduate teachers had an equally heightened tendency toward competence-based theoretical orientation. However, both groups substantially utilized instructional moves conforming to text-based orientation. There were also significant frequency differences between undergraduate and graduate teachers in their recourse to competence-based pedagogical moves. It is concluded that while the inclusion of a finite number of theoretical coursework may sway L2 teachers to sanction competence-based theoretical orientation, a more clinical approach to teacher education should be embraced to promote the symbiotic belief-practice relationship among L2 reading teachers.

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This study examines the potential connections among learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in English, their perceptions of autonomy-supportive teaching and two individual difference variables, i.e. motivation and English speaking self-efficacy. Two hundred and five Iranian EFL learners responded to four questionnaires. The data obtained from the collected instruments were subjected to structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings revealed significant positive paths from autonomy-supportive teaching to motivation, WTC in English, and English speaking self-efficacy. Further significant paths were found leading from motivation to WTC and from English speaking self-efficacy to motivation. The findings also indicated that autonomy-supportive teaching style and English speaking self-efficacy could indirectly affect learners’ WTC through the mediation of motivation. Furthermore, autonomy-supportive teaching was found to indirectly predict learners’ motivation through the mediating role of self-efficacy. The implications of the study for teachers and teacher educators are discussed.

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This study was an attempt to evaluate the undergraduate TEFL program at Farhangian University. The university specializes in educating prospective teachers and the program is important since it is expected to equip the student teachers with the knowledge and skills necessary for qualified teachers. Hence, in this study, measures were taken to investigate the merits and demerits of the implemented TEFL program and explore the domains in which the program needs to be improved. The study assessed the program from the perspectives of 220 student teachers, 32 teacher educators, and 12 heads of departments and experts including the university deans, deputies, and research and teaching staff, through using three instruments, i.e. questionnaires, interviews, and observations in a mixed methods design .The findings indicated that the TEFL program did not address some educational and administrative needs as the participants believed that they were not enriched with the necessary skills, the practice of the learned theories, problem solving, critical thinking, flexibility, and innovation. Furthermore, this study demonstrated several theory- practice gaps in the curriculum.

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Understanding how to structure the “Statement-of-the-Problem” (SP) section of a thesis is necessary for EFL students to develop a logical argumentation for a problem statement. This study intended to compare Move structures of SP sections of theses written by native speakers of Persian (NSPs) and English (NSEs). To this end, 100 SP sections (50 SP sections written by NSEs and 50 written by NSPs) of theses in the field of English language teaching (ELT) were selected and analyzed by the researchers based on Swales' (1990, 2004) CARS models. The analysis of the data revealed that Move structures of SP sections of the two corpora were similar. In both corpora, the three Moves of “Establishing a territory”, “Establishing a niche”, and “Presenting the present work” were considered obligatory. There were some differences in the Steps and many Move pattern variations in the two corpora. The results can broaden the understanding of the nature and function of this genre and can have important implications for EFL instructors.

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The competitive academic atmosphere of the higher education worldwide along with the current trend in producing research-oriented knowledge by universities has made research publication the first priority for doctoral students. In this study, we addressed the conceptions of purpose, process, and product of publishing research articles among Iranian doctoral students of applied linguistics. To this end, thirty students were interviewed and the data were analyzed using the grounded theory approach. The findings demonstrated that doctoral students publish papers to prepare a competition-winning resume, significantly contribute to the ELT community, turn into life-long learners and problem-solvers, and fulfill their course requirements. Furthermore, with regard to the research publication process, they highlighted the role of mixed-methods in spotting real problems in context and getting their papers published in prestigious journals. Additionally, the students believed that publishing in international journals grants them the opportunity to gain international recognition, attract an international audience, receive expert quality feedback from professional reviewers, publish in journals specific in focus and scope, and avoid publishing in cheap predatory journals. Finally, the findings suggest that the doctoral students need more systematic coaching to successfully conduct and publish their research.