درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Reconciliating the logics of Post-method Era, Critical Pedagogy, and Sociocultural Theory in its conceptual framework, this study postulated Iranian EFL teachers’ socio-pedagogical identity as comprising conformity, criticality, and conformity-criticality mediation in order to explore and model the different aspects of Iranian EFL teachers’ “transformative teaching self,” probably contributing to their pedagogical ZPD and sociocultural identity development. To this end, Systematic Reflexive Constructivist Grounded Theory was utilized as the methodology of this 63-participant study managing both the data collection procedures, i.e. interview, focus group, observation, field notes, and document analysis, and the data analysis procedures, i.e. tabulation, open coding, initial memoing, axial coding, intermediate memoing, selective coding, advanced memoing, and theoretical sampling. The findings of the study were put into a putative model, delineating Iranian EFL teachers’ transformative teaching self at its core, which can constantly stimulate the teachers’ three interactive triplex identity types, i.e. conformative, critical, and mediational identities. Finally, this study entailed some implications such as updating teachers’ knowledge of mediational identity, professional retraining about mediation, encouraging teachers to achieve an understanding of their transformative teaching self, and preparing them to be efficient transformative teaching learners and practitioners of the model in this study.

Although scientific forum has obliged its members to hide their presence particularly while they are discussing research outcomes to avoid personal biases, a recent trend is encouraging writers to demonstrate their identity as the author of the text through the use of first person pronouns in order to take responsibility for the content. Therefore, the present study focuses on intermediate and advanced EFL learners‘ adoption of first person pronouns so as to manifest their identity in argumentative and narrative writings. A total of 30 EFL intermediate and advanced students attending an IELTS preparation course were requested to write essays on narrative and argumentative topics. The comparison between their uses of self-mention pronouns revealed that there was not a significant difference between the use of first person pronouns which are adopted by advanced and intermediate learners in the use of pronouns in both modes of writing (argumentative and narrative essays). Moreover, by tallying first person pronouns, it is shown that advanced learners have exploited first person pronouns less than intermediate learners within narrative writings. In addition, it was found that learners used more first person pronouns in narrative writings than in argumentative ones. Findings imply that since argumentative writing requires logical reasoning, learners prefer to be cautious about the adoption of first person pronouns and revealing their presence to show their credible self. English language teachers are suggested to make language learners aware of the uses of self-mention pronouns while practicing different writing modes. Since the overuse of the personal pronouns as well as the absolute absence of the mentioned pronouns is not recommended in writing, explicit instruction concerning the use of self-mention in witting is recommended.

The present study attempted to discover whether there is a significant relationship between EFL teachers' critical thinking ability and their teaching success.To this end, 113 Iranian male and female English teachers were required to fill out Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal. Besides, their students were asked to answer the Characteristics of Successful EFL Teachers questionnaire. The statistical analysis of the data showed that there was a significant correlation between EFL teachers’ critical thinking skill and their teaching success. Besides, findings revealed that there was a significant difference between male and female teachers regarding their critical thinking skills, and that BA teachers differed from AS teachers with regard to critical thinking skills. More specifically, male BA teachers took the most advantages from critical thinking skills than others.