مقالات رزومه محمد علی اکبری

Rumors as archaic forms of communication emerge in uncertain and threatening situations. They can provide insights into people's underlying perceptions and anxieties in society. Despite their significance, few, if any, studies addressed rumors in the Iranian context. Accordingly, the present study analyzed 407 rumors collected from Iranian social media to investigate their primary motivations, subjects, and supported and targeted groups. The results of content analysis revealed that two new types of rumors were found specific to the Iranian context, in addition to hostility, fear, hope, and curiosity advocated by Knapp (1944) and Allport and Postman (1947b). The "support" rumors supported a particular entity, and "us vs. them" rumors combined support and hostility motivations. Concerning the subjects of rumors, 7 overarching subjects were detected: politics, religion, people, culture, quality of life, events, and terrorism. The results also revealed that hostility was the most common motivation for rumor-mongering. The prominent supported and targeted groups of rumors were Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran, respectively. Based on the present study's findings, it seems that the type and frequency of the rumor motivation may vary in terms of context and society in which rumors pass along. Several implications and contributions are discussed in detail.

The ongoing increase in the population of Kurdish as Heritage Language (HL) learners encouraged the present study to explore the learners’ motivations as well as the influential factors on its development. Second Language Motivational Self-System (L2MSS) was adopted as the theoretical framework wherein, the subscales of the Ideal-self, Ought-to self and Motivational Intensity were explored. The study drew on a mixed-methods design in which semi-structured interviews were conducted with four undergraduate participants and a total number of 213 undergraduate Iranian learners of Kurdish participated in a survey. The qualitative results indicated that the interviewees had a positive experience of learning Kurdish in the classroom and were more enthusiastic to get engaged in the process of learning in the future. Furthermore, the quantitative results indicated that the participants more often pursued Kurdish in terms of the Ideal self and that learning Kurdish revealed to be an opportunity to fulfill the learners’ wishes. It was also found that the male participants were propelled by stronger motivational force which was more probably due to stronger sense of identity among male participants.

The current study investigates the feasibility of implementing EFL teachers' Individual Development Planning at Iranian public schools. It further explores the underlying reasons for the (imp) possibility of practicing this program and seeks the teachers' suggestions to improve the schools' condition. To this end, data were collected from 180 EFL teachers using a researcher-made questionnaire and a follow-up semi-structured interview. The results of one-sample t-tests revealed a slight possibility following the interviews which indicated 14 underlying reasons for the insufficient grounds at public schools. Participating teachers also argued that equipping a room with necessary technological tools, allocating monetary resources, assigning specific teachers time to practice IDP, taking advantage of head teachers, changing the school administration delegation, and performing advocating cultural acts can provide a ground for IDP implementation. The findings demonstrate the necessity of creating changes by policymakers, school principals, and EFL teachers so that they can all benefit from this program.

Teacher training programs play a vital role in developing student-teachers’ understanding of their professional selves as an effective factor in successful teaching. Though the number of studies regarding the effects of teacher education on foreign language teachers’ self-images continues to proliferate, little attention has been paid to Iranian EFL student-teachers, particularly females, in terms of future images of professional selves being developed during their training at Teacher Education University. Using the Possible selves theory (Markus & Nurius, 1986), the present qualitative study explores and compares the future professional self-images of EFL student-teachers at Iranian Teacher Education University. Eight female student-teachers in the first, third, and last year of their studies from several female teacher education colleges around the country accepted to participate in the interviews. They were asked to discuss their desired and feared selves, as well as their plans for achieving or avoiding these selves, respectively. In-depth phenomenological interviewing was adopted to collect the data. Before fieldwork experience, student-teachers’ hopes and fears were mostly geared to classroom routines, while by the end, their statements were predominantly theory-based and sophisticated. Most student-teachers made reference to some plans for attaining their desired professional self-images and avoiding feared ones. The study put forward some implications for teacher training and education programs.

This study investigated the creativity-supportive behaviors of Iranian EFL teachers. A mixed-methods data collection approach was adopted: quantitative data were obtained from randomly selected 94 teachers and 216 students through the Persian version of the Creativity Fostering Teaching (CFT) index (Soh, 2000), and qualitative data were collected via students' reports on twelve classroom aspects. To analyze the quantitative data, an independent samples t-test and for the qualitative data, thematic analysis coding were used. There was a significant difference between the teachers' and the students' views on creativity-supportive behaviors of Iranian EFL teachers. Additionally, environment and interaction were extracted as two main themes from the analysis of the qualitative data. These two themes were discussed as the central factors influencing the creativity-supportive behaviors of the teachers. Although most Iranian EFL teachers want and try to adopt strategies and activities to develop or support creativity in their classrooms, the results showed that Iranian EFL students do not experience the classrooms as a locus of supporting creativity. Generally, creativity is not implemented and supported in Iranian EFL classrooms. The findings illustrate that teacher-training programs should equip Iranian EFL teachers with the knowledge and strategies of creativity- fostering instruction.

This study evaluated the cultural content of Vision textbook series that are currently in use in Iranian public secondary school system. The aim was to find the most frequent cultural references as well as the most-frequently-represented cultural senses. For this purpose, frequency counts were used to collect the data and the culture categorization framework (Adaskou et. al., 1990) and cultural reference framework (Cortazzi & Jin, 1999), modified by Tajeddin and Teimournezhad (2014), were used to analyze the data. Results of the frequency counts indicated that the Vision ELT textbooks contained the most cultural content associated with Persian as the source culture. Similarly, the focus was primarily on the esthetic sense of culture, followed respectively by semantic, sociological and sociolinguistic (pragmatic) senses. The study ends up with implications for EFL stake-holders in Iranian context as well as the ELT enterprise in general.

While huge efforts have been devoted to rhetorical moves and the lexico-grammatical features of various sections of academic research articles (RAs) across various disciplines, studies that have focused on RA highlights and their linguistic characterizations are limited. This study involved compiling a corpus of 250 RA highlights sampled from five leading journals in applied linguistics. Guided by qualitative analysis and using AntConc 3.4.4</em>, which is a freeware corpus analysis toolkit, 1,116 highlight entries were studied and classified based on their communicative functions. Based on both qualitative and quantitative analysis, a classification of moves in the structure of research article highlights was proposed. Moreover, the metadiscursive devices and promotional elements deployed by authors in applied linguistics were examined using Hyland’s (2005) model of stance and engagement as well as Lindeberg’s (2004) taxonomies of direct and indirect promotional steps. This study offers insights into the type of entries and the promotional elements used in RA highlights by writers to highlight the value of their research. The pedagogical applications of our findings for academic writing pedagogy are discussed.

Despite the importance of Iranian teacher education programmes at Teacher Education universities for preparing EFL teachers in terms of effective teaching, no research has surveyed the role of these programmes in preparing effective teachers. This cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate Iranian Teacher Education universities programmes for EFL student-teachers regarding five areas of teaching knowledge which conform to California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CSTP) that are stated in Commission on Teacher Credentialing (2009). This study employed a mixed-method design in which 126 in-service EFL teachers from six cities and 212 EFL student-teachers from six Iranian Teacher Education universities participated in a survey; then interviews were conducted with 12 selected volunteers from participants. The student-teachers’ expectations of TEPs at the beginning, their evaluations of the programmes at the end, and in-service teachers’ evaluations after years of teaching in terms of their preparation for teaching were compared. The results of Mixed Between-within (Repeated Measures) ANOVA as well as interview analyses and interpretations showed that there was a difference between the first-year group’s expectations and the last-year group’s evaluations. The difference was significant between female first- and last-year groups, female in-service and last-year groups as well as male in-service and male first- and last-year groups. Both male and female in-service teachers acknowledged the effectiveness of their four years of education at Teacher Education universities. Implications for providing more effective teacher education programmes are discussed.