مطالب

The success of Developmental State in East Asia once again has proved the role of the state in the process of development and shed light on the weakness of Neoclassic theories in their emphasis on the role of the market as a balancing force. One of the necessary variables for the formation of a developmental state is the international context. Like many states in East Asia, the path toward development in post-revolution Iran seems to be through the formation of a developmental state in the context of the existing international system. But the reality is something different. Therefore, the objectives of the present paper are 1 - to study the relationship between the international context and formation of the developmental state in Iran; 2 – to study the role of the United States in the process of formation of the developmental state in Iran; 3 – to study the means the US has employed to block the formation of a developmental state in Iran; and, 4 – to study the role of Iran’s foreign policy behavior in the formation of the developmental state. The main question of the present paper is what are the international obstacles to the formation of a developmental government in the Islamic Republic of Iran? The main hypothesis of this paper is: International context, US hegemonic status in the international system, and various political and economic obstacles and sanctions imposed by the US have prevented the formation of a developmental government in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The findings of the research sustained the hypothesis of this study.

The negotiated syllabus, also known as a learner-centered and process-oriented syllabus, was introduced as an alternative to a pre-determined syllabus a couple of decades ago. The review of the related studies shows the number of studies in the use of negotiated syllabus in English language teaching is scanty. This study aimed at delving into the impacts of the negotiated syllabus on undergraduate students’ reading comprehension, oral production, and the participants’ perspectives about the syllabus. A mixed-methods research design was employed. Data were collected through researcher-developed tests and an interview checklist. The quantitative section analyzed through independent samples-tests (p=0.05) verified that the negotiated syllabus had a significant effect on the experimental mean scores regarding reading comprehension and oral ability production. In addition, results of the qualitative phase indicated that the use of negotiated syllabus, despite some learner, teacher, and institute-related constraints, has some pedagogical advantages. In light of the results, teachers are recommended to minimize the limitations and implement the negotiated syllabus in teaching English programs to optimize the language learners’ motivation and language achievement.  

As Farhangian Universities play a crucial role in educating soon-to-be teachers, the program being developed for students of this university needs to be meticulously developed in order to fulfill the crucial role of teacher training centers. Researchers of this phenomenological study tried to evaluate curriculum specified for TEFL students in Farhangian Universities by the implementation of SWOT analysis. Seven professors of Farhangian University in Mazandaran participated in this study to speak for their perspectives regarding the curriculum’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. They took part in interview conducted by researchers and their comments were transcribed to be segmented and codified in later sections. The findings of this study clearly demonstrated that this program suffers more from weaknesses and there are opportunities which might act as compensation for weaknesses and threats. The significant weakness of this curriculum that was elaborated by participants was misplacement of courses without any observation of necessary content knowledge and pre-requisites. Specification of courses exclusively for teaching was mentioned as one of the important strengths of this university. Participants believed that the first opportunity to be made use of, is to maintain connection with other teacher training centers in Iran and around the world.