مقالات رزومه دکتر کتایون افضلی

During Covid-19, Teachers faced new sources of stressors caused by the emergency conversion to online language teaching. Thus, the current study aimed to explore EFL teachers’ stressors and their coping strategies in online classes. To this end, eighty-six Iranian EFL teachers from three language schools participated in this study. To identify the stressors, two study-specific questionnaires were applied. Furthermore, to study the coping strategies a short version of COPE (Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced Questionnaire) was applied. Moreover, the researcher interviewed eleven participants to attain more reliable results. The findings revealed that the students-related stressors were sources of more stressful experiences. Furthermore, it revealed that the most frequently applied coping strategy was problem-focused strategies, and the least frequently used coping strategies were avoidance strategies. The findings have implications for pre-service and in-service teacher education programs.

This study intended to explore the perceptions of Iranian high-school English teachers and the perspectives of policymakers on success in teaching English. Data were collected through questionnaires and curriculum documents. To this end, one-hundred-twenty Iranian high-school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers contributed to the research. National Lesson Plan and Fundamental Reform Document of Education (FRDE) were used to explore policymakers’ perspectives on success in teaching English at the high school level. The data were analyzed using both the Constant Comparative Method (Charmaz, 2006) and template coding to realize similarities and differences between the answers. General themes and patterns were recognized and discussed. The results of this study showed that while the teachers tended to improve students’ communication skills, policymakers must also be aware of the fact that change is an all-inclusive phenomenon demanding full cooperation and commitment from a host of policy workers. In conclusion, teachers’ perceptions of success in teaching English and expectations of educational change should be modified in such a way that the teachers see the importance and relevance of educational change to their professional success. In this respect, most Iranian high school EFL teachers are needed to modernize, i.e., to provide them with valuable pre-service and in-service courses with communicative frameworks that they can operate in their classrooms. The findings can be helpful for EFL teachers to reflect on their perceptions and accord them with their practices, use communicative activities that are more constructive in their classrooms.

Despite the significance of writing critical recall and reflection journals for pre service teachers, a multitude number of recall and reflection journals written by them are descriptive and minimalistic. In view of this problem, the aim of current study was twofold: 1) to analyze discoursal patterns of pre service teachers ‘collaborative reflection via Edmodo, 2) to examine if it can improve their reflective writing from descriptive to critical. To this end, a total of forty-three pre service teachers participated in the study. The participants were then required to write their reflections on their classmates' teaching performances in Edmodo collaboratively. To examine their improvement, the discoursal patterns of their reflective writings were analyzed using Prilla et al.'s (2015) framework. To elicit EFL pre service teachers' comments on collaborative reflection via Edmodo, a questionnaire was assigned to the participants, and an interview was set up to shed more light on their comments. The results indicated that some discoursal patterns of critical reflective writing had emerged in pre service teachers' recall and reflection journals. The analysis of the questionnaires and the interview also revealed that the majority of the participants agreed that Edmodo had had positive contribution to their critical reflective skill. The findings have implications for EFL practicum courses.

It is frequently affirmed that EFL teachers face many stressors at work. While they keep experiencing perturbations that may cause fluctuations in their efficacy, immunity acts as a buffer and allows teachers to carry on performing academically in the classroom and emotionally and psychologically over the course of their careers (Thelen, 2005). The present study adapted a mixed-method design to investigate the distribution of the participants across different immunity types and also the destabilizing events which triggers Iranian EFL teachers' immunity. To fulfill this aim, 204 English teachers from two provinces of Iran (Isfahan and Charmahal Bakhtiari) took part in the study. To collect the data, Language Teacher Immunity Questionnaire (Hiver, 2016), reflective journal, and interview were utilized. The data gathered via questionnaire were subjected to descriptive analysis and cluster analysis while the qualitative data were analyzed through the three-stage coding process of grounded theory. The results of the qualitative analysis led to the identification of three immunity types, namely, productively immunized, maladaptively immunized, and immunocompromised with maladaptively immunized teachers having the highest rate of distribution among the participants. The results of the study further identified 3 categories of educational, organizational, and personal triggers along with 14 subcategories among Iranian EFL teachers. The findings of the study can have implications for teachers, stakeholders, and policy-makers to help teachers foster their immunity against stressors and avoid fatigue and burnout.

Despite the fact that classroom interaction is an indispensable aspect of language learning, many EFL students do not show any willingness to participate (WTP) in classroom activities. In view of this problem, the current study aimed to describe how Iranian EFL learners’ participation in collaborative tasks can lead to WTP. Therefore, primarily discoursal features of collaborative tasks and then behavioral representations of WTP were identified. To this end, nine EFL intermediate learners (five males and four females) participated in the study and were assigned to two groups. First two collaborative tasks were designed: The first group were asked to make a digital story collaboratively and the second group were asked to make an advertisement for selling a house. The classroom interactions among students in different classrooms were video-recorded and transcribed based on conversation analysis principles. Then the frequency of the turns taken by each student was counted as indicator of WTP in the assigned task. Multimodal analysis (gaze, facial expressions, head movement, body posture and gesture) was also used to analyze behavioral representations of EFL learners’ WTP. The findings revealed that discoursal features of WTP include negotiation, elaboration, conflict, sharing expertise, humor, asking for elaboration, conflict.,and behavioral representations include eye contact, body language, and the sitting position of students which can indicate that students’ engagement in collaborative tasks can have impact on their WTP. The findings can have implications for EFL teachers, material developers, and teacher education programs.

The cultural turn in Translation Studies puts the emphasis on the role of social and political factors in translation. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran, anti-Western discourse became dominant in the country. Given this change, the present research aimed to study the representation of colonizers in the translations of post-colonial novels into Farsi. To this end, Burmese Days by George Orwell, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and A Passage to India by Edward Morgan Forster and their translations into Farsi were studied, and the parts representing colonizers were discerned and com- pared with their Farsi translations. The results show that translators used amplification, modulation, particularization, and generalization to represent their anti-Western ideologies. The findings indicate how anti-Western discourse of society was reflected in the translations of post-colonial novels.

Despite the fact that there are a wide range of strategies used to foster interactions in EFL conversation classrooms, many novice teachers are not aware of them. In view of this problem, the current study aimed to identify such strategies commonly used by EFL teachers in conversation classrooms. To this end, fifty sessions of college level conversation classrooms were observed andtheir teacher-student interactions were audio recorded. The class recordings were, then, transcribed by means of transcription symbols proposed by Hutchby and Wooffitt (2008), and were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively based on the taxonomy of foreign language interaction analysis system proposed by Walsh (2006). The findings revealed that teacher echo and asking questions were among the most frequent strategies teachers use to foster teacher-student interactions; however, asking questions and agreement strategies were used to foster student-student interactions.The findings have implications for teaching conversations in EFL classrooms which were discussed in the article.

Recent interdisciplinary studies have revealed that hope plays a key role in academic achievement and job performance. Due to the paucity of research on the interface of hope and second or foreign (L2) language teaching, for the first time, this paper sets out to develop a categorical conceptualization of hope for teaching English as a foreign language (EFL). While an exploratory mixed-methods research was designed, using observation and in-depth interviews, grounded-based qualitative data were obtained from experienced Iranian EFL teachers until the theoretical saturation of data was achieved. Thirty-eight items linked to seven main categories were identified. To judge the validation of the qualitative findings, a 38-item questionnaire of hope for EFL teaching was designed and then piloted. Next, to test the generalizability of the piloting-phase findings, the modified 35-item questionnaire of hope for EFL teaching was administered to a convenience sample of 228 EFL teachers from three Iranian provinces of Tehran, Chaharmahal Bakhtiari, and Isfahan. Statistical analyses of the testing data confirmed that 35 items are attached to seven broad underlying components of hope for EFL teaching. Therefore, the main factors, including interpersonal relationship, social purpose, goal-setting, emotion, certainty, source, and anticipated effort were confirmed. Further, the explanatory power of all the items involved in developing hope for EFL teaching was tested and estimated. The findings can shed more light on developing educational interventionist programs which can lead EFL teachers into higher levels of hope for EFL teaching.

Critical incidents are unanticipated and unplanned events which happen in the classrooms and may throw teachers into a state of disequilibrium which results in teachers’ losing their resilience. Therefore, when encountering critical incidents teachers are required to stop and reflect on the occurred event. However, teacher education programs do not prepare student teachers to cope with these situations appropriately. In view of this problem, the aim of the present study is to categorize critical incidents and provide a repertoire of teachers’ productive coping strategies. To this end, fifteen English teachers, eight females and seven males, were selected from three universities and three institutes in Isfahan, Iran. They were asked to narrate the critical incidents they faced in their English classrooms and their coping strategies they used in their classrooms throughout one semester. The three-stage coding process of grounded theory was utilized to analyze 49 narrated critical incidents and teachers’ coping strategies. Six categories and 14 subcategories of critical incidents were identified. The findings can have implications for teacher education programs. There should be educational programs to encourage teachers to reflect on the critical incidents and promote their resilience when encountering critical incidents in their classrooms. The programs could be used for pre- or in-service teachers. Critical incidents provide opportunities for reflection and challenges of teachers’ beliefs and values to promote and foster teacher development.

Although EFL learners pass different courses in writing at university and are expected to be able to express their thoughts in various forms of writing, their texts suffer from many problems. Therefore, the current study aimed to identify the type of problems that postgraduate EFL learners encounter in writing their thesis proposals. To this end, first, the problems marked by supervisors in thirty-two proposals written by TEFL and Translation Studies students were classified into two general categories: macro and micro problems. Then, these problems were classified based on Halliday and Hassan’s (1976) and Tardy’s (2009) models of academic genre. After that, a questionnaire about writing problems was administered to participants to elicit their perceptions towards writing MA proposals. The responses were then analyzed according to Dornyei’s (2003) suggestions for analyzing qualitative data. The findings revealed that discoursal and linguistic problems were among the highest frequent problems. The analysis of the questionnaires also indicated that EFL postgraduate learners hold negative attitude towards proposal writing, and considered discoursal problems as their major challenge in writing. There was consistency between their ideas and the real problems.

Since the emergence of the cultural turn in translation studies, external factors affecting translation have re- ceived attention in this field. Macro factors such as culture, politics in target contexts, history, ideological manipulation, and translators’ institutional rules have become the concern of translation studies. Consider- ing these factors, the current study aimed to identify the manipulative strategies used by translators in trans- lating patient information leaflets (PILs) from English into Farsi. To this end, 30 parallel corpus of PILs were compared to identify the translation strategies used in them; subsequently, an interview was conducted with 10 administrators of pharmaceutical companies to find out the reasons why these particular strategies were used by translators. The findings showed that translators used three main translation strategies, namely addition, deletion, and transliteration to manipulate texts in the process of PILs translation. The interview results indicated that translators intend to enforce institutional setting rules by adopting these particular translation strategies.

In view of the fact that pre-service teachers’ critical reflection through evaluating teaching activity of their peers is an important part of practicum activity, the current study aimed to analyze the recall and reflection journals written by pre-service teachers to identify and evaluate the discoursal features of their journals. To this end, a total of 272 recall and reflection journals written by pre-service teachers were analyzed on the basis of Hiebert, Morris, Berk, and Jansen's (2007) framework for analyzing their teaching practices. The findings indicated that the discourse of recall and reflection journals written by pre-service teachers is affective and descriptive rather than critical. Pre-service teachers predominantly ignore learners in writing their reflection journals. The findings of this study pointed to the need for explicit instruction of the discoursal features of reflection in teacher education classes. Therefore, teacher educators should help pre-service teachers to develop effective reflective discourse in practicum courses.