مطالب

This article aims to identify the most spiritually favorable nights of the year for believers and the optimal timing for nightly devotion to God by employing the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique. Given the emphasis on nocturnal worship in Surah al-Muzzammil , this study explores the relationship between the length of night and the opportunities it provides for worship. Using DEA, the nights of the year are evaluated based on the duration of night and environmental conditions in order to determine those nights that offer the greatest potential for devotion and supplication. In addition to temporal variables, nocturnal temperature is also considered as an influential factor in this evaluation. DEA serves here as an analytical tool for comparative performance assessment, facilitating the identification of nights with the most favorable conditions for nighttime worship. In the methodological section, two scenarios are implemented. The first scenario constructs a composite index based on the interval between the religious midnight (half of the canonical night) and fajr (dawn), as well as between fajr and sunrise. The second scenario applies the Fair Model (KA) and the AP Model with three indices: the interval from the religious midnight to fajr , from fajr to sunrise, and the temperature index. For more precise evaluation, the AP and KA models are also executed for the first scenario. The findings of this research can assist believers in planning their nocturnal worship during the most spiritually advantageous periods of the night.

Farabi, as a philosopher who presented the Aristotelian tradition in the Islamic world in a distinctive way, combining it with Neoplatonism and Platonism, also retained a large part of Aristotelian epistemology in his own cognitive system. Just as Aristotle, according to modern epistemological interpretations, is largely considered an evidentialist, so is Farabi. Evidentialism means that the only acceptable criterion for adopting beliefs is valid rational or empirical reasons appropriate to that belief. However, in Iran, many, especially some admirers of the Illuminationist  and Mulla Sadra's traditions, attempt to somehow discover a kind of intuitionism or at least evidence against evidentialism in Farabi. This judgment contradicts the view of some major specialists in Islamic philosophy, such as Dimitri Gutas. This issue is very important because the shift in Islamic epistemology from evidentialism to other directions played a very significant role in changing the nature of this philosophy. Accordingly, in this article, we will attempt to show based on which evidence Farabi is an evidentialist, and how he is largely indebted to Aristotle in this evidentialism, and we will also examine the evidence against Farabi's evidentialism. Given that the term "evidentialism" is an expression from contemporary Western epistemology, we will look at Farabi's philosophy from the perspective of this branch of philosophy. In this article, we will primarily view the matter from the perspective of Western specialists in Islamic philosophy, as their language is close to the language of contemporary epistemology. Our research method is descriptive and analytical, and comparative where appropriate. The findings of this research indicate that Farabi is largely an evidentialist, but a moderate one. This finding is very important in relation to determining the place and role of Farabi's epistemology in Islamic philosophy, as well as the later introduction of intuitionism into Islamic philosophy.

Dynamic assessment (DA) is an innovative way of assessing students’ knowledge. Given the importance of knowing how to reduce writing apprehension and improve writing self-efficacy in language learning, this study investigated the effects of models of DA including Buddoff’s Learning Potential Measurement Approach (LPMA), Carlson and Wiedl’s Testing-the-Limits Approach (TLA), and Intensive Mediated Learning Experience (IMLE) on L2 writing apprehension and self-efficacy. The participants were 302 students in four groups. All groups were given the writing apprehension and writing self-efficacy questionnaires as pretests, followed by 20 sessions of treatment. The same questionnaires were given in the last session as posttests. The collected data were analyzed using one-way Analysis of Covariance. The results showed a significant difference among the four groups’ writing apprehension and writing self-efficacy mean scores on the posttests. The findings also revealed that the IMLE group outperformed the other two groups. Based on the results, it was concluded that employing DA models can be conducive to reducing writing apprehension and improving writing self-efficacy among EFL learners. The findings of the present study can have useful implications for teachers, students, material designers, and language assessors.

The current paper intends to exploit the Many Facet Rasch Model to investigate and compare the impact of situations (items) and raters on test takers' performance on the Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) and Discourse Self-Assessment Tests (DSAT). In this study, the participants were 110 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan in Iran. The students were asked to complete the WDCT and rate themselves on that test. Four raters scored the WDCT tests. According to the FACETS results, there were significant differences in students' performance between the two methods. The stable fit statistics and differing levels of difficulty measures for each test method indicated that each test had a unique way of differentiating the test taker's pragmatic ability. Based on the results, both DSAT and WDCT are acceptable measures for pragmatic ability; however, there are some fitness problems in DSAT. This shows the unpredictable pattern of ratings in the DSAT. It is recommended to have rater training to obtain more accurate results from the DSAT. Finally, the implications were discussed.