IdeologiesofEnglish Language Teaching in Iranian Academic Research: Mainstream, Alternative, and Beyond

Abstract

Discourse practices play crucial roles in shaping the cultural environment of social events and, therefore, influence how they actually take place. Promotional materials and media advertisements are significant instances of such discourses through which understandings of social practices, including language education, are both reflected and shaped. In this study, I explore the advertisements of Iranian private language teaching institutes appearing in Hamshahri newspaper to uncover ideologies behind them and to examine the subtleties of how the advertisements represent and at the same time reproduce the ideological assumptions regarding "English language teaching" in Iran. A contextual investigation of ideological presuppositions underlying the discourse of these advertisements reveals that they tend to reproduce mystified instrumentalist images of language learning. From a critical view of language education, I discuss this simplistic ideological representation and the obligation of the profession of language education to address it.

Bridging Language Education and “New Literacy Studies”: Reinvigorating Courses of General English at an Iranian University

“…Following the emphasis of NLS on the situatedness and authenticity of learning experiences (The New London Group, 1996) and almost contrary to the mainstream divisionism and fragmentationist views of language teaching (Mirhosseini & Samar, 2015) heavily reflected in university GE courses in Iran, we approached language as a unified whole situated in meaningful personal and social contexts at the service of meaning-making (Masny, 2011;Masny & Cole, 2014). Rather than absorbing a set of formal skills and components through lifeless activities bearing little relevance to learners' being, students appeared to live with and discover the language.…”

“…Within the overall climate of challenges in official language education in Iran (Farhady et al, 2010;Kennedy, 2015;Mirhosseini & Samar, 2015;Shahri, 2018), GE appears to have its own share. Fundamentally, students' attitudes, preferences, and needs with regard to these courses are argued not to be well understood by instructors (Eslami-Rasekh & Valizadeh, 2004;Moiinvaziri, 2014).…”

Iranian English Language Teachers’ Conceptions Towards Research

“…Some others have investigated the methodological features, ideological foundations, and the content of the Iranian ELT research papers (Mehrani & Khodi, 2014). To bridge the gap, the present study makes an attempt to make a further contribution in the existing lacuna in the literature by probing into the language teachers' conceptions of what makes the educational research (Mirhosseini & Ghafar Samar, 2015).…”

Task‐Based Instruction for Autonomy: Connections With Contexts of Practice, Conceptions of Teaching, and Professional Development Strategies

“…However, any methodological proposal will be shaped by situational forces that may either foster it or generate resistance. Innovation and tradition always coexist, and the latter may determine teachers’ sense of agency and professional identity (Beauchamp & Thomas, ), especially in the case of educational imports or colonisations (Holliday, ; Hu, ; Mirhosseini & Samar, ).…”