Online teaching

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has brought about many changes and challenges in our lives, interactions, relationships, and modes of learning and teaching and helped us learn how to adapt ourselves to unanticipated conditions to survive. It stimulated universities, schools, and institutions of higher education to rethink and restructure their policies to find solutions to the problems as well as researchers all around the world to help educational systems get out of the mess. This study aimed to contribute to the body of literature and investigated the impacts of COVID-19 on English language teacher education. Convenience sampling was employed to recruit thirty student teachers as the participants of the study. To do the study, the author used semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews (n = 20), student teachers' reflective journals (n = 10), and his own reflective journals to collect the data. Grounded theory was used for data analysis. The findings of the study revealed that there was a shift from anomaly to congruity, student teachers saw the pandemic as an opportunity, they felt the need for technology inclusion, development, and promotion in their educational contexts, there was an urgent need to train teachers and learners to use technology in their contexts to keep the education running, and teachers had to reconstruct their identities and turn to formative assessment. The findings can contribute to the body of literature and prompt English language teacher education programs, teacher educators, administrators, teachers, and policymakers to consider the findings while they are designing, upgrading, reforming, and running their syllabi, curriculums, and programs.

The importance of mathematics is common knowledge, and teachers have always been concerned with teaching this subject correctly and efficiently. For this reason, teaching mathematics should be given special attention, and even the base and frameworks should be provided for online teaching of this subject. This study aims to introduce mathsframe.co.uk as a platform for online teaching of mathematics. The present study tried to turn the challenges facing online mathematics teaching into opportunities for better instruction. The method of research was descriptive and a case study (in-depth). The facilities and games of the website were divided into categories of Most popular free mathematics games, Tablet friendly games, Word problems, Using a calculator, Money, Sorting and classifying, National curriculum, Addition and subtraction, Fractions, decimals and percentages, Measuring and time, Partitioning, place value and rounding, Latest mathematics games, Multiplication and division, Ordering, comparing and reading numbers, Geometry, Statistics and ITPs. There are games and options in these categories which are suitable to teach and exercise subjects like money, reading and working with different types of charts, numbers divisible to a certain number and prime numbers, decimals, measuring angles, numbers axis, exercising and learning different math operations, multiplication table, comparing numbers, showing the number of shapes and categories, counting numbers, place value chart, measuring volume, ratio, possibility, fraction, the method of transferring numbers in technical addition and subtraction, symmetry, measuring mass and temperature, coordinates, clock, working with a ruler, volume and perimeter. Many math instruction games and options complementary to teachers' teaching are free, and there is no need for signing up, entering information or paying a fee; but a basic knowledge of English is required for teaching or exercising elements of the categories.

In recent years social networking sites have affected almost all aspects of our lives. The Instagram social network has become popular among people, and there are lots of pages on this social media, which are explicitly presenting English materials to their followers. This non-experimental descriptive study aimed to determine the strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of English teaching pages on Instagram . Twelve English teaching pages were observed due to their high number of followers to discover the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. To provide more fruitful points for the SWOT analysis, ten active Instagram users were interviewed. They were asked to fill out a SWOT analysis written interview about Instagram English teaching pages. The interpretative approach and frequency and percentage were used to analyze the data, owing to the nature of the gathered data in this research. Employing the results of this study, admins of English teaching pages can take a forward step to make their pages more beneficial and more effective in the process of English teaching. The findings can also help those scholars or teachers who want to use Instagram to present their services. Being aware of the effectiveness of English teaching pages helps language learners be more cautious about selecting them as a source of learning English.

The objective was threefold: (a) to investigate the difference among online teaching performance of EFL student teachers at Iran University of Science and Technology who received peer feedback, expert feedback, and reflected on their own teaching practice; (b) to examine the difference between rating scores given by student teachers and those by instructor to online teaching; and (c) to determine student teachers’ best experiences, challenges, and lessons they learnt from expert feedback, peer observation, and reflection. The results of this mixed methods experimental research revealed no statistically significant difference in the three group’s scores on their second teaching practice; however, there was statistically significant difference between the scores of the first and second practices for all three groups. The results also showed that student teachers mostly underrated their first teaching, while they overrated their second teaching. The findings also indicated that their best experiences were related to using technological tools, working with Adobe Connect, making interesting materials, and using games and songs. Their challenges included lack of face-to-face communication, engaging all participants, and preparing suitable materials, whereas teaching new vocabulary in context, simplifying songs by pre-teaching their unknown words, and using online games and websites were the lessons they learnt.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, universities around the world faced closure because of social distancing and lockdown, therefore, unprecedently, education had to move online and universities in Iran were not exceptional. This sudden and abrupt shift required teachers to rethink their attitudes and beliefs. This study has been conducted to explore English Language Teachers’ attitudes toward their practices concerning the effects of social distancing and the maximized use of technology in the teaching profession. Having adopted a qualitative method to investigate teachers’ experiences, the data of this study were collected through interviews with nine English language university teachers, and their reflective journals. Generally, the results communicate considerable appreciation for integrating technology in English language courses. To be more detailed, this study revealed three main categories for positive attitudes (pedagogical innovation, instructional support, and professional identity formation) each with some subcategories. Also, the analysis highlights three concerns (technology-related challenges, classroom management, and inflexibility in behavior) for online teaching. The implications of the study mainly provide a welcoming environment for utilizing technology in teaching, especially in English language teaching.

Purpose : The present study aimed to provide a jihadi management model to align the goals of Iranian Schools in the Digital Age, which was inevitable during the corona pandemic. Method : The grounded theory method has been used due to the lack of a codified model of jihadi management. The statistical population was experts and professors in the field of education and the system of education. The snowball technique was used to sample the population. A total of 11 education experts were interviewed. In the data research, the researcher performed data analysis including open coding, axial coding, and selective coding simultaneously with the data collection stage which was performed using a semi-structured interview. Reliability, data originality, relevance, and reliability were used to assess validity and reliability. Findings : The findings showed that 15 main and pivotal categories led to the design of the jihadi management model of education. Categories based on causal, contextual, intervention and consequences include jihad-centered culture, jihadist structure, jihadist growth-oriented, jihadist-centered education, jihadist meritocracy, spiritual values, society supporting jihadism, revolutionary and pragmatic culture, the adaptation of jihad-centered Administrative system, rule of law based on jihad, job coordination with jihad, family and cultural education, teaching jihad principles, monitoring, and evaluation, and developing a jihad-centered structure. Conclusion : Therefore, for proper jihadi management in schools, various factors are involved that provide the basis for management. Also, the need for this type of jihadi management and training is felt more in our country.

As the demand for online language education continues to grow, English teacherpreneurs play a significant role in shaping teaching practice and identity in virtual affinity spaces. This study examined the professional identity and practice of Iranian EFL teacherpreneurs in such spaces. The study adopted a qualitative approach and the data were collected through in-depth interviews and a focus group discussion. The findings of this research indicated that the participants as Iranian EFL teacherpreneurs in online affinity spaces possessed a wide range of positive traits and engaged in interactive and non-traditional teaching practices going beyond EFL traditional teaching practices. They also noted challenges being online English teacherpreneurs in Iran, highlighting a lack of financial support from mainstream education system and insufficient electronic facilities to create online content among others. This study has implications for different agencies in language teaching, including teachers and policy-makers in language education, raising their awareness regarding the identity and practice of online teacherpreneurs in virtual affinity spaces.  

Online teaching ultimately encourages language teaching to use established and best practices to provide this teaching modality in empirically validated ways. The use of the media in classrooms leads students to learn about the subject more creatively and objectively.  The study investigated the relationship between teachers' media literacy and their attitude toward online teaching. Three hundred eighty-three males and females EFL teachers participated in the present study. All participants had a Master of Arts in TEFL. The participations were selected through convenience sampling. Then, the researcher used the Pearson correlation to investigate the correlation between teachers’ media literacy and their attitude toward online teaching. The results showed that there was a positive significant relationship between teachers’ media literacy and their attitude towards online teaching.