Language tests, including international high-stakes English proficiency tests widely used around the world, are to be viewed as ideological constructs connected with power relations and center-periphery demarcations at different social levels. In this paper, we examine the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) as an instance of…

In the past decades, neoliberalism has permeated (foreign) language education, as has been discussed by critical research in the fields of: curriculum theory, applied linguistics, discourse analysis, language policy, language assessment, to name a few. Despite the fact that research on foreign language education and neoliberalism is certainly…

English language teaching has always been treated as a socio-cultural issue in post-revolutionary Iran. Fueled by anti-imperialist sentiment, the political authorities diagnosed Western influence as the major ailment of the society. Having to accommodate for the undeniable virtue of learning English for international communication, educationalists…

This article presents the findings related to the identity construction processes of an Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher in the context of Iran. Data were collected using a life history approach with a critical-event focus and analyzed via social ecology of identity (Wenger, 1998). The findings indicated that the participating…

Mainstream trends of English language teaching (ELT) are predominantly constructed within the epistemological boundaries shaped by the traditional conceptions of linguistics, learning, and teaching as well as positivist research methodology. What tends to be overshadowed by such conceptions is the underlying foundational belief structure of ELT…

Transmission-based language classrooms have been mostly dominated by teachers' authority, as reflected in IRF (Teacher Initiation, Student Response, Teacher Follow up/Feedback) architecture of their discourses. By contrast, Critical Pedagogy (CP) has been after fostering multivocality in and out of classroom borders. Which qualities of teacher…

The authors report on a study aimed at exploring the role of a teacher education program (TEP) rested upon the tenets of critical pedagogy in influencing teachers' cognitions and practices concerning first-language (L1) use in second-language (L2) classrooms. Participants were 10 Iranian English as a foreign language teachers, whose cognitions…