مطالب

The purpose of this study is to identify the roots of cultural policy making in the IRI. Having a historical approach this article has used a thematic content analysis with a “content coding technique” to review the works of three Islamic revolutionary scholars whose views have been frequent reference to many cultural policy makers before and after the revolution. In this regard there have been “thirty headlines” identified as policy making headings which are divided into: ten headlines from Ali Shariati’s book called “Returns”, eight headlines from "The Future of the Islamic Revolution" a book by Morteza Motahari, and twelve headlines from a series of Seyyed Ahmad Fardid’s lectures, titled as "Hereafter Conquest and Meetings of Farahi". According to the results of this research, the sharing feature of these three views, albeit from different origins of ideas, is the two following lines "Confrontation with Being Westernized" and "the Priority of Reform, and the Development of Thought and Culture". Another result of this research indicates the influence of the document "Principles of cultural policy of the country" through the views of these scholars. At the end of this article, it is claimed that the Islamic Republic of Iran's cultural policies, both elective and compound, are rooted in the cultural theorists of the revolution, and it cannot be accepted that the Islamic Republic of Iran, in its forty-year lifetime, departed from the first designed cultural principles. It is a form of early thought that has been recognized and formed as normal

Given the prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic and consequently the emergence of more online courses throughout the world, exploring teachers’ views about the shift from face-to-face to online environments seems significant. The objective of this study was thus twofold: (a) to investigate the roles EFL teachers take and (b) to determine competencies required to teach online English language courses. Mixed-methods research was conducted, and the participants were 100 MA students of TEFL at Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). The required data were collected through administering two questionnaires, adapted by the researchers, on online teacher roles and competencies along with two open-ended questions. After carrying out descriptive statistics for the quantitative data and theme-based analysis for the qualitative ones, the results indicated that online teaching roles could be hierarchically ranked as pedagogical, professional, administrative, social, assessment, technological, and researcher. With regard to online teacher competencies, pedagogical, professional, and technological role competencies received the highest mean, while the researcher role competencies gained the lowest one. Pre-service EFL teachers held the view that having knowledge of technology and its use, knowledge of course/content, ability to sustain learners' motivation, online teaching skills, and ability to communicate were other competencies teachers require to fulfill their roles in online English language courses. The findings can provide more insights into how to redesign and map online teacher professional development courses to better prepare potential EFL teachers and boost their quality as online EFL teachers.

Teachers serving at the front lines of education during difficult times of the pandemic seem to have been forgotten in these bustling days around the world. While delivery of high-quality education is on the shoulders of these people, their life and wellbeing have been affected as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic; however, there is little documented evidence on how the pandemic has impacted language teachers’ wellbeing. To fill this gap, this qualitative study examines the wellbeing of English as a Foreign Language teachers in Iranian public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ten participants who attended in-depth interviews were found to have their wellbeing levels severely affected by the pandemic. Indeed, the newly emerged challenges have been added to the existing obstacles and augmented the already stressful teaching profession. Based on the findings, recommendations are provided for authorities and parents to be employed during the pandemic and afterward to help teachers flourish and subsequently improve quality education.

China’s increasing power as one of the most important revisionist powers has received different reactions from its neighbors and the dominant powers of the international system. In fact, China as a rising and revisionist power challenges the regional and hegemonic order. In such a situation, the deterrent actions exerted by the United States, as a hegemon of international system, seems to be natural. The present research is an attempt to study China’s reactions to foreign threats from the perspective of theories of International Politics and Foreign Policy Analysis. The paper enjoys a descriptive-analytical design with the application of the theory on the case. The data collection was made through the study of existing literature and virtual data. The findings of this study show that China's reaction to existing or potential threats can carry very different interpretations and analytical results from the perspective of different theoretical perspectives.

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a Philosophy for Children Course on aspects of students' school engagement. School engagement is a structure indicating that students can create personal relationships with their teachers in addition to the educational content. For this purpose, a quasi-experimental study was conducted on 7th-grade students (n=128) from 4 classes at the same school as the intervention and control groups. In the current quasi-experimental, pre-test, and post-test study, the independent variable was the philosophy for children (P4C) program (ten 60 minute sessions) and the dependent variables were the school engagement aspects including behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and agency engagements. To analyze the data ANOVA was used. The findings indicated that the score of all four aspects of school engagement were significantly higher in the intervention group who attended the Philosophy for Children Program  than those of the control group. Based on the obtained results, 28.2% of changes in total school engagement were attributed to the P4C program. The results show a significant increase in school engagement and its aspects. Philosophy for Children Program can be used to create an educational atmosphere with the highest relationship to students’ curriculum in which the students can rule out their learning behaviors with high motivation.

Inventing and applying motivational, highly efficient, and engaging strategies for teaching elementary school students is a concern that has always occupied the minds of teachers and experts in this field. Meanwhile, using music as an easy and accessible, low-cost, and popular solution in creating and promoting creativity, self-confidence, motivation, and cognitive skills and students' self-directed learning has been considered an important and effective strategy. To this end, the present research investigated the music and melodic teaching impact on the math learning progress of the third-grade elementary school students in Tehran. The research adopted a quasi-experimental design with the experimental and control group. The statistical population included about 20,000 third-grade students in region 1 of Tehran that were selected as available sampling from two Rastar and Meysam Tamar schools, from which 30 students were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups (15 in each group) as the study sample. Both groups learned the same and the specified concepts. However, the experimental group learned these concepts using music and melodic teaching while the control group learned these concepts using the lecture-based teaching method and the final math scores of the students were used in the analyses. As the instrument, a demographic information questionnaire, the mathematic motivation questionnaire, a progress test and an achievement test were used in this study. The results of covariance analysis showed that teaching math using music and melodic method has a significant positive impact on elementary school students’ math learning (70.8%) and more motivated learning (86%). Therefore, it can be concluded that by using melodic teaching in teaching math concepts can be more effective than traditional teaching methods.