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Instructional materials as a basic component of curriculums and a central constituent of standards-based programs play a provisional role in both setting the aims and leading the way. English textbooks in Iran’s public education are officially developed and used nationwide. One recently introduced English textbook series is Prospects (I-III) . It is intended for the the Iranian junior high schools and is normally supposed to guide teachers and provide students with the basic exposure to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. The textbooks, together with the lessons, have to be aligned in targeting educational objectives given the sequential nature of the intended grades and the serial contents of instruction. This study evaluated the vertical and horizontal alignment among the series’ textbooks and lessons drawing on Bloom’s revised taxonomy of educational objectives (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). The evaluation initially involved descriptive content analysis of the activities within and across the textbooks using a checklist developed based on the taxonomy. Then, the content matrixes were subjected to Porter et al.’s (2007) alignment index for the statistical assessment of lessons and textbooks’ alignment. The findings generally suggested that the lessons were tuned adequately, albeit accommodating mainly lower-order knowledge types and cognitive skills at the cost of discarding the higher-order ones. In addition, the statistically positive and significant PAIs of 0.93, 0.78, and 0.74 between Prospect I & II, Prospect I & III, and Prospect II & III, respectively pointed to a harmony in the series’ content. The paper discusses the findings and implications in the Iranian  EFL context

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Transmission-based teacher education programs have mostly dominated the field of teaching English as a foreign language. Considering the prominent position of critical pedagogical principles in prospective teachers’ perceptions of their professional roles and responsibilities, there is a need for detailed investigations of teacher education programs informed by the tenets of critical pedagogy in prospective teachers’ professional identity. There has been a paucity of research that addresses the impact of such programs on prospective teachers’ professional identity in an EFL context; therefore, this study intends to address the gap. This qualitative study was conducted to examine the role of a critical-informed teacher education program in influencing prospective EFL teachers’ professional identity construction. Participants were 19 prospective teachers whose process of professional identity construction were analysed through reflective journals, class discussions, and semi-structured interviews before and after the program. Results of the study revealed three major shifts in prospective teachers’ professional identity: “from a student’s voice to a teacher’s voice”, “from an uncritical attitude to developing agency”, “from a narrow view of ELT to a broad view”. To foster critical ideas in EFL prospective teachers, the study recommends the use of dialogic discussions and written reflective tasks in teacher education programs.

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Some researches in the domain of women's employment show that gender is a significant factor in the professional position i.e. gender makes women less likely to achieve lucrative and high-paying jobs compared to their men folks. ‏However, in many countries, increasing women's education and skills are key indicators of their growing participation in the labor market. ‏In Iran, despite a decline in women's illiteracy and spectacular rise intheir presenceat universities, even in some traditionally masculine fields, the unemployment rate of educated women is higher than those of men. ‏This study is aimed at understanding the female students' opinions about the gap between higher education and their career prospects. For that purpose, a qualitative research in four government universities from four regions of Iran has been conducted. The data of the study shows that despite theirgrowing number in these universities, most female students are worried about their professional future. In nutshell, it can be said that the massification of higher education has not resulted into more access of girls to the labor market, and there is much disappointment among them of finding a suitable job after graduating from universities.

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Although several studies have been carried out after the approval of the Fundamental Reform Document of Education (FRDE) in 2011, a small number of studies have reviewed the textbooks of Iranian schools in the light of this document, and unfortunately, English language textbooks have almost been ignored. Accordingly, the present study sought to answer the questions of what objectives are included in this document regarding English language teaching at schools, and to what extent the English language textbooks for Iranian Junior High Schools are based on these objectives. Therefore, the text of the document was first analyzed using directional content analysis. Then, based on the objectives extracted from the FRDE, the content of English language textbooks were reviewed.  The results showed that the objectives of teaching English in accordance with this document should be (1) critical understanding and analysis of non-Iranian culture, (2) responsible interaction to introduce Iranian-Islamic culture and civilization, as well as dissemination of local findings and achievements and (3) establishing effective interaction and communication with non-Iranian parties, which is specifically explained in the form of two micro-goals (a) knowledge and mastery of local issues and (b) knowledge and awareness of global issues. Then, using deductive content analysis, English textbooks were analyzed. The results showed that these textbooks deal mainly with Iranian culture, and the balance between Iranian and "non-Iranian" culture, which is clearly defined in the document in three regional, Islamic and global forms but is not noticed. Accordingly, the findings of this study implied that it is essential that prospect series be revised to include non-Iranian cultural issues, especially those from Islamic countries and nations. In addition, there is a need to include global issues while domesticating them moderately.
 

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The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which academic admission criteria predict prospective teachers’ competency during teacher education program. To this end, a total of 186 prospective teachers majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at Teacher Education University in Iran were selected as the convenience sample of the study. They completed two questionnaires, Prospective Teachers’ Professional Attitude and Prospective Teachers’ Professional Identity. The participants’ high school GPA, university entrance score, and university GPA were also obtained. The results of Pearson product-moment correlations indicated a significant positive correlation among academic measures of high school GPA, university entrance score, and university GPA but no significant correlation was detected between these academic measures and nonacademic measures of professional identity and professional attitude. The results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that the two admission criteria had just predictive validity for university academic achievement; however they could not predict prospective teachers’ professional attitude or their professional identity. Based on the findings of this study, it would be concluded that the academic measures used for admitting candidates into the program have low predictive validity for predicting non-academic attributes of teacher competenc