مطالب

This study aims at investigating the challenges of conducting qualitative research (QLR) from Iranian ELT (English Language Teaching) Ph.D. students’ and ELT faculty members’ viewpoints in the Iranian higher education context. The participants of the study consisted of 100 Ph.D. students majoring in ELT and 50 ELT faculty members. The study followed a mixed-methods approach with the exploratory design. The instruments utilized for collecting the data were a semi-structured interview and a researcher-made questionnaire. To analyze the qualitative data, a grounded theory approach was employed (Charmaz, 2006), and to analyze quantitative data, both descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized. The results of the study indicated that from the ELT Ph.D. students' perspectives, the Iranian educational system, professors, and lack of time, respectively, are factors affecting the possible weaknesses in undertaking QLR. While from the ELT faculty members' points of view, lack of time is the only reason for weaknesses in undertaking QLR. The results also demonstrated that from the viewpoint of ELT Ph.D. students, data interpretation, data analysis, data collection, data coding, and determining the validity of research, respectively, are the most challenging parts of conducting QLR. Moreover, from the perspective of ELT faculty members, data analysis, data collection, data interpretation, and data coding, respectively, are the most challenging parts of undertaking QLR. The implications of the present study for the universities in the context under investigation are discussed. At the end of the paper, some suggestions for further research are presented. 

This study investigates the representations of Hindu-Muslim relationship in Bollywood movies from 2008 to 2018. It is assumed that after 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, which are known as 26/11, conflicts between Hindus and Muslims have escalated. Since Indian people are extreme fans of movies, especially Bollywood movies, in this regard, it is expected that media could play a significant role in increasing or alleviating the conflicts by influencing people’s attitudes and opinions. This research seeks to examine the extent and modality of the representation of Hindu-Muslim relationships in Bollywood after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The study was conducted through a content analysis of 11 Bollywood movies, which were selected from 70 Muslim-characters-based movies. Favorable, unfavorable, neutral and unclear were the four factors through which the movies’ contents were analyzed. The overall analysis of these factors indicate that 66.17% of the scenes were favorable, 14.70% were unfavorable, 2.94% were neutral, and 16.17% presented unclear images of Hindu-Muslim relationship in Bollywood movies. The results also indicate that Bollywood is not only depicting a positive image of this relationship, but also tries to tighten the bonds of the two religions, and in a broader sense, ties the two neighboring countries, Pakistan and India.

Oil is undoubtedly the most important, and at the same time, the most politico-economic commodity in today’s world. As the most important source of economic and political power, oil has constantly played a significant role for Iranian governments both before and after the revolution [1979], and has served as a major fuel for their economic power. However, historical experience in our country shows that having exuberant oil resources and revenue has had no significant link to welfare facilities or to becoming a welfare state; and the governments have always deprived the country from having a democratic state by creating certain rent-seeking networks. This article studies the effects of oil revenue in the formation of a democratic state accountable to its subjects while tries to show how huge amount of oil revenue during 2005 to 2013 halted the process of democratization in the country.

This study has been carried out to develop a critical checklist for global/commercial textbooks which play a crucial role in language teaching/learning. For this aim, a number of items have been developed based on a comprehensive review of the related literature and experts’ opinions. The tentative checklist was administered to the targeted population, yet 326 checklists were deemed appropriate for the analysis. The statistical analyses utilized in this study were exploratory factor analysis and partial confirmatory factor analysis. Prior to the exploratory factor analysis, a correlation analysis reduced the items into 44. Next, the exploratory factor analysis identified ten components. Additionally, six items were excluded from the checklist due to simultaneous factor loading and the finalized checklist was truncated into 38 items.  To investigate the possibility for further validation studies, the result of partial confirmatory factor analysis was not statistically significant.  Results of this study have the potentials to shed some lights on the ideological aspects of textbook evaluation.