national curriculum

Abstract The present investigation is an endeavor to scrutinize the Iranian EFL professors’ and teachers’ viewpoints towards the status quo as well as the constituents of the current Iranian EFL national curriculum. Two questionnaires based on teachers and experts’ focus groups and study’s objectives were designed. The participants of the study included 306 Iranian EFL teachers and 13 Iranian EFL professors. The teachers’ questionnaire was analyzed through SPSS version 21 and the professors’ questionnaire was analyzed through coding. The findings revealed that both teachers and professors do not have positive attitudes towards the new curriculum. In spite of the educational reform in Iran and writing the new curriculum and the new textbooks, time allotment, load of skills in each English book, and untrained teachers hinder the new curriculum to reach its target, i.e. communication with the world. Therefore, to fulfill the objectives of the new curriculum, Educational Department of Iran should remove the difficulties.

Enabling learners to communicate both in an inter-personal level and with people of other nations is greatly emphasized in language learning programs. The present study seeks to analyze the conceptions of Iranian teachers after they implemented the new communicative language teaching (CLT) curriculum. To do so, two teachers were asked to record one session of their classes and subsequently participate in semi-structured interviews to elaborate on their rationale of what they did in the classroom. One of the teachers was a male with over 20 years of teaching experience, and the other was a female with almost the same years of teaching experience as the male. The analysis of the data showed wide discrepancies between teachers’ actual activities and the curriculum recommendations. The teachers highlighted their previous schooling as a student as well as contextual realities as factors influencing their teaching. The study highlighted the point that if teachers’ beliefs and the contextual realities are not in tune, teachers filter the curriculum in their own preferred ways leading to divergences from the proposed curriculum. Therefore, the study has clear implications for curriculum developers to consider contextual realities when proposing any innovations. It can also be of use for teachers to be aware of the need to be more cautious when implementing a new curriculum.