آذر حسینی فاطمی

The present study attempted to look deeply into how Iranian English teachers defined morality and if there was any significant difference with respect to gender and years of teaching experience. The study followed a mixed-methods design including a semi-structured interview and a multiple choice single-item questionnaire. The results revealed that while the main concern for the participants in different decades of teaching was choosing right over wrong, the prevailing theme for male and female teachers differed in that the male teachers moved towards less personalized and more agentic conceptions, whereas female teachers were more concerned with the context and society as their experience increased. The analysis of the quantitative data also illustrated there was a significant difference between female and male teachers in the 2nd and 3rd decades of teaching. Moreover, the differences between participants based on their level of experience were statistically significant

This study tried to investigate the impact of task-based instruction (TBI) on the enhancement of Iranian EFL learners’ speaking skill. The study also tried to scrutinize the impact of TBI on learners’ emotional intelligence. To meet these ends, 60 students were randomly divided into two groups, the experimental group and the control group. At the very first session of the term, two speaking examinations were conducted for both experimental and control group. After the speaking examinations, the participants were asked to answer Bar-On’s emotional intelligence questionnaire. The experimental group was instructed through task-based approach and the control group received instruction through present-practice-produce (PPP) approach. The scores obtained by two raters from the interview post-tests were analyzed through non-parametric tests, and the data obtained from EQ questionnaires were analyzed through t-tests. Results of the statistical analysis revealed that the experimental group performed significantly better on the speaking post-test than the control group. Furthermore, the findings also indicated that the learners in the experimental group became more emotionally intelligent than those in the control group.

In a broad dichotomy, cultures are divided into collectivists and individualists. This difference between cultures is manifested in educational settings and the way students and teachers approach educational tasks and activities (Hofstede, 1986). This study investigated the way the dominant culture can affect the cognitive and affective load of classrooms and eventually account for the development of students` moral judgment. To this end, 400 Iranian university students majoring in English language and literature were asked to complete FAMC test (Javadi mehr et al., 2015a). This test measures the role of four factors of "focus, sharing, challenge and support" in the development of moral competency. The results revealed that there was a growth in the pattern of affective and cognitive factors from the first to the last year of studying in this major. The results also indicated that challenge was the least attended cognitive factor but support was always the most prevalent factor in all academic years. The findings are then discussed by taking into account the findings of other related studies conducted in individualist and collectivist societies.

هویت ایرانی را نمی توان مفهومی یکپارچه در نظر گرفت. تاریخ ایران نشان می دهد که ایران ترکیبی از مدرینته/اسلام/ملیت می باشد. هافستد (2001) فرهنگ را به شش قسمت تقسیم می کند: فاصله قدرت، فردگرایی/جمع گرایی، مردسالاری/زن سالاری، گریز از عدم قطعیت، تمایل کوتاه مدت/بلندمدت، و لذت طلبی/سخت کوشی. این پژوهش قصد دارد رابطه این ابعاد فرهنگی را با هویت بررسی نماید. بر این اساس، دو پرسشنامه ابعاد فرهنگی و اجزای هویتی به تعدادی از دانشجویان ایرانی از رشته های مختلف داده شد. از تحلیل کارسپاندنس و رگراسیون چندگانه برای تحلیل داده ها استفاده شد. نتایج نشان داد ارتباط معناداری میان ابعاد فرهنگی و اجزای هویتی وجود دارد که می تواند برخی از بحران های هویتی در جامعه ایرانی را توجیه کند. در پایان، نتایج مورد بحث و بررسی قرار گرفت و راهکارهایی برای کاهش بحران هویت ارائه شد.

The current study aimed at investigating the relationship between life-wise syllabus- as a new type of syllabus which emerged as the result of recent developments in applied ELT and corresponding to the "education for life"- and teacher success in an EFL context. Life-wise syllabus introduced by Pishghadam in 2011 directed English teachers’ attention to give priority to life issues rather than language in class. These new concepts encourage curriculum development based on life and all of its manifestations which is the core principle of humanistic education. Then teaching should not only comprise mathematics, chemistry, or literature, but also emotions, relationships, attitudes, thinking styles, feelings, and states of mind. Due to the recent emergence of this syllabus and the dearth of research over its effectiveness, this research study was carried out to shed more light on the issue. To this end, 200 teachers- 100 from private sector and 100 from public sector- and their 1771 students were chosen as the participants of the research study from Mashhad and Ghaen cities. In this study, the teachers were given "Life-Responsive Language Teaching beliefs Questionnaire" (hereafter LRLTB), and their students were given the "Characteristics of Successful EFL Teachers Questionnaire" (hereafter CSET). The results of the correlational study indicated that the main variables and also their subscales were highly correlated. The comparison between male and female teachers regarding correlation between variables did not show any significant difference. But the comparison between private and public school teachers in terms of the relationship between the variables displayed that they were more strongly correlated for the latter.

Almost little is known about creative writing. In this research, creative writing has been introduced as an alternative to academic writing. The aims were to introduce creative writing as an alternative to academic writing to boost the participants’ attitude towards writing in general. The participants were 32 senior university students studying English Translation at Islamic Azad University, Tehran. The study includes two phases: quantitative and qualitative. For the quantitative phase, the participants were given a questionnaire so that the researchers could measure their attitudes about writing. Then, a creative writing pretest was administered, followed by a posttest to see to what extent the treatment could help the participants improve their writing skill. For the qualitative phase, a videotaped oral interview with the participants was closely examined to find out about the participants’ attitudes towards writing. The means of the pretest and posttest indicated a three-fold increase in the scores after the treatment was over. The oral interview, furthermore, showed that most participants had a negative attitude towards creative writing. It was finally concluded that creative writing might be considered as a useful asset in academic contexts, expected to alleviate the negative attitude of learners towards writing to feel more confident.