While research on language teachers' engagement in action research (AR) has received a surge of attention, the influence of AR programs on English language teacher agency remains underexamined. This qualitative study explored how ten English language teachers' perceptions of their agency changed as they participated in an action research…

Research is an indispensable part of any educational endeavour generally and graduate/postgraduate studies particularly, since the Iranian educational system requires M.A. and Ph.D. candidates to submit a thesis or dissertation as partial fulfilment of the requirements for attaining their respective academic degrees. However, a review of the…

Despite the recognition of the importance of teachers' professional development, the exploration of teachers' Critical Incidents (CIs) as a type of professional development initiative has received insufficient attention in L2 teaching contexts. Motivated by the dearth of research in this area and building on complexity theory as its conceptual…

While research on teachers' Critical Incidents (CIs) has grown exponentially, little research has been done on teachers' assessment-related CIs, much less examining the contributions of such CIs to their identity sense-making. This study aimed to fill some of this gap by exploring assessment-related CIs of 13 Iranian L2 teachers and the associated…

Using a grounded theory approach to the study of historical texts and an expert interview, this study investigates culturally embedded conceptions of giftedness as evidenced in one of the most important Iranian literary canons, "The Gulistan", to guide the development of education and programming for gifted and talented students in Iran.…

Globalization as an increasingly influencing force has led English language to become the lingua franca of the world. However, the global spread of English is considered as linguistic and cultural imperialism of English speaking countries to exert their dominance, power, culture, ideology and language over the periphery countries. The devastating…

This study aims to paint a vivid picture of the English teacher training courses held in Iranian private language institutes, both to critically analyse their aims and content, and to find their strengths and weaknesses. In line with this, qualitative data were gathered through information available on 34 institutes' websites, narrative…

Kumaravadivelu's (2003) introduction and development of "postmethod" led to the demise of methods and a dramatic change in the language teaching profession. In fact, it can be claimed that the arrival of postmethod pedagogy in language teaching might be the reason for the abandonment and replacement of method by context sensitive,…

Perceptual (mis)matches between teachers and learners are said to affect learning success or failure. Self-assessment, as a formative assessment tool, may, inter alia, be considered a means to minimize such mismatches. Therefore, the present study investigated the extent to which learners' assessment of their own speaking performance, before and…

The purpose of this study is to obtain suitable quality criteria for evaluation of electronic content for virtual courses. We attempt to find the aspects which are important in developing e-content for virtual courses and to determine the criteria we need to judge for the quality and efficiency of learning objects and e-content. So we can classify…