مطالب

Although Sociocultural Theory (SCT) was introduced to English Language Teaching (ELT) almost three decades ago, it has not yet started to find its way into the epistemological and practical aspects of English Language Teacher Education (LTE) programs in Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) language institutions context. Not having met the needs of English teachers, teacher educators, and academic and non-academic teaching programs and feeling a pressing need for innovative approaches in language teacher education, the time is ripe for LTE programs to present a curriculum that is globally driven and locally appropriate. To this end, this paper aimed to develop a sociocultural language teacher education (SLTE) curriculum model as an alternative to the LTE programs in the Iranian EFL context. The researchers applied Vygotskian principles and extensions of SCT pedagogy to construct a curriculum model that draws on Graves’ framework of LTE curriculum design and Richards’ model of teacher education that collectively incorporate different aspects, namely context analysis, needs analysis, approach, content, process, teacher educator’s roles, student teachers’ roles, and program evaluation. To present an  innovative LTE program, the researchers extracted and put together the tenets, extensions, and categories of SCT comprehensively and presented them through a complementary curriculum model that is a combination of Graves’ framework and Richards’ model of teacher education. This tentative but dynamic curriculum model might help teachers, teacher educators, policymakers, and other stakeholders to reconceptualize and restructure their mentalities and use the findings when designing small-scale and large-scale LTE programs.

This comparative study aimed to examine the differences in job burnout, psychological resilience, and altruism between teachers in regular and special education schools in Kerman Province, as well as to explore the relationships among these variables. The research employed a causal-comparative design and included a sample of 80 teachers—40 from special education schools and 40 from regular schools. Data were collected using three standardized instruments: the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), which assesses emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment; the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), a 25-item measure of psychological resilience; and the Rashin Altruism Scale, a 5-item instrument assessing an individual’s tendency to help others. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to evaluate group differences across the three variables, and Pearson correlation was used to assess relationships among them. MANOVA results revealed significant multivariate differences between the two groups (p < 0.05). Univariate analyses indicated that special education teachers reported higher levels of burnout and lower psychological resilience compared to regular school teachers. No significant difference was observed in altruism. Additionally, correlation analysis showed significant associations among burnout, resilience, and altruism across the total sample. These findings highlight the psychological challenges faced by special education teachers and underscore the need for targeted interventions to enhance resilience and reduce burnout in this population.

Online learning is one of the educational channels that learners and educational centers have recently turned to. However, there are still concerns about its effectiveness. The aim of the study was to explain learners' perspectives on the effectiveness of online learning. The present study was a qualitative study using content analysis method that was conducted in 1402. The participants were 38 female (n=22) and male (n=16) language learners from Tehran Language School who had experience in online learning and were selected through purposive sampling. Data were collected and analyzed through interviews. The overall analysis of the interviews indicates that 63% of learners (n=24) rated the method as weak, 20% (n=8) rated the method as average, and 17% (n=6) rated the method as good. 29 percent (n=11) believed that the method was effective in improving their knowledge, and 23 percent (n=9) considered the method effective in improving speaking skills. 15 percent (n=6) are willing to participate in online learning again and 83 percent (n=31) believed that the most important problem of online learning is the lack of necessary infrastructure and 83.6 percent (n=32) of the participants believe that the best learning method to improve English language skills is face-to-face learning. The findings indicate that online learning is not a suitable method for improving English language knowledge and skills compared to face-to-face education and if it is necessary to learn English online, it is necessary to provide infrastructure.