مطالب

Piety for Muslim women is an internal source of agency, which motivates their social presence and fulfills their political commitments. In spite of the prevalence of Orientalist views on Muslim women for centuries, a new space has opened under transnational feminism in recent years to re-consider their socio-political interpretations. The present paper discusses the situation of women in West Asia, where global terrorism has emerged with a recently developed counter-terrorism outlook among Muslim women. Defending the Shiite sanctuaries in Syria and Iraq against the Takfiris symbolically embodies this counter-terrorism ideology, for which hundreds of Muslims have sacrificed their lives. This study explores the ideas and ideals of Shiite Iranian and Afghan women who have lost their husbands in Syria or Iraq fighting against the ISIS. Deep semi-structured interviews depicted their definitions of “martyrdom” as a new and transnational identity. In addition, the analysis of their understanding of opportunities and challenges, within the family or at a social scale, revealed five major themes: a) transnational solidarity of the Islamic Ummah, b) the significance of jihadi culture to preserve the global peace, c) strong Shiite leadership/Wilayat-al-Faqih, d) motherhood a simultaneous opportunities and challenges, and e) intersectionality of motherly challenges for Afghan women.

Development and progress as a complex concept based on a process have various dimensions and levels usually studied in economic, political, social, and cultural development. Political development is one of the essential dimensions and indicators critical in theories and approaches to development in schools of thought and political sociology studies. While defining and clarifying the concept of "Political Excellence" and recognising the differences between it and the idea of "Political Development" and introducing the indicators of this exploratory concept, the present article examines them in terms of content from Ayatollah Khamenei's perspective. The main question is about the place of political excellence idea and progress in Ayatollah Khamenei's political thought. In response, it should be said that in his view, political excellence will be achieved by considering local conditions and domestic equipment, which is a new viewpoint and an acceptable model to replace with the concept of Western political development. Explaining the concept of political excellence, while considering the Western models of development unsuccessful, emphasising the indigenous Iranian-Islamic model of progress, he expressed seven signs and indicators for the desired model of political excellence and improvement, some of which, such as struggle, the spirit of risk-taking and discipline, the foundations of Islamic epistemology and attention to the two dimensions of human [body and soul], are the prelude to excellence and progress, and others, such as ensuring the independence of the country, producing the science and realising the social justice, is the result of excellence and improvement. In explaining the manifestations of political excellence and progress, he also expresses characteristics of the people such as awareness and insight, participation and presence in scenes and elections, and public monitoring and unity. 

This study was an attempt to investigate the perception of Iranian senior high school teachers toward critical cultural awareness. The participants of the study comprised of 307 teachers in different high schools in Qazvin. All the participants filled in the Critical Cultural Awareness Questionnaire. The data were then fed into SPSS software and were subjected to Principal Components Analysis. Three factors were extracted and named as CCA in ELT Programs, CCA in ELT Textbooks and Materials, and CCA in General Terms, and the participants’ responses were analyzed based on these factors. The results indicated that the teachers’ critical awareness perception toward ELT Textbooks and Materials was the highest factor. The results of the item analysis revealed that teachers indicate all cultures should have an equal status in ELT textbooks and materials. It was concluded that the teachers’ cultural awareness regarding the integration of culture into mainstream teaching should be raised and they should pay more attention to culture in their classes. One significant implication of this study for EFL teachers and also syllabus designers is that an intercultural curriculum can enable learners to have a better understanding of the target materials.

This study aimed at investigating the effect of process-based and genre- based approaches to writing instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ writing performance across high and low creativity levels. The study followed a quasi-experimental design and it was conducted with a homogenous sample of 72 learners who were selected from an initial group of 90 participants from a private language institute in Urmia, Iran. Based on the results of an English proficiency test known as Oxford Placement Test and a test of creativity known as Abedi-Schumacher Creativity Test, the participants were assigned into four groups of 18. The treatment period lasted for 10 sessions including pretest and posttest sessions. The results of ANCOVA statistics showed that the type of instruction had statistically significant effect on the learners’ writing performance, with the higher performance of genre-based over the process-based writing instruction, while the level of creativity had no significant effect on the participants’ writing scores. Furthermore, a significant interaction was observed between instruction type and the learners’ creativity level. The findings of this study have pedagogical implications for teachers, syllabus designers, and practitioners to use appropriate instructional methods in ELT with special attention on learners’ creativity levels.

Formative Assessment plays a significant role in classrooms in understanding how students progress in their learning activities. The attitudes of teachers towards application of Alternative Assessment (AA) strategies in English language classroom are considered important as they can affect the teachers’ overall performance in the classroom. The aim of the current study was to examine EFL teachers’ perceptions regarding alternative assessment strategies and their relationship while correlated with teacher reflections and perceptions. In order to conduct this study, a mixed-methods design was adopted. The participants who attended the quantitative and qualitative phases were 81 students and 30 EFL teachers, respectively. In order to collect the research data, two research instruments were used: the teacher reflection questionnaire (Akbari et al., 2010) and the teachers’ perceptions of alternative assessment questionnaire (Elharrar, 2006). The Pearson correlation coefficient statistical test was run for the quantitative data, and the data of the qualitative nature was processed through content-analysis procedure. The findings from the qualitative data were presented using frequency and percentage. Further discussions were provided using the findings from the quantitative data analysis. The results from this phase of analysis illustrated that there was a significant positive relationship between EFL teachers’ reflection and their experience of implementing alternative assessment strategies. The findings of this study may render implications for EFL teachers, teacher trainers, and the assessment administrates.