Iranian EFL Teachers’ Challenges with the New ELT Program after the Reform: From Dream to Reality

Abstract

There is no doubt concerning the interdependence of educational progress with human development, socio-economic growth, greater opportunities, welfare, and political stability. Hence,for further development and growth of education,transformations and reforms in curriculum are required to reflect the latest changes in theories and praxis of the modern world (Fterniati, 2006). In Iran, due to the inadequacy of the preceding ELT education policies in developing students’ communicative skills and capabilities, a reform occurred in the ELT program as new communicative based textbooks entitled as “English for School Series” and CLT pedagogywere introduced into the context of public schools. However, implementation of the innovative curriculum was associated with different feedback from English teachers. This qualitative study is, indeed, an attempt to explore concerns, problems, and constraints that EFL teachers experienced through the revolutionary reform of the ELT education. Thus, based on stratified purposive sampling, the researchers selected 35male and female teachers of English at grades one and two of junior high schools from both urban and rural regions of Tehran, Shiraz, and Yazd, Iran.The researchers usedtranscription and codification of data gathered through semi-structured interview to find the emergent themes concerning teachers’ challenges and problems in Iran. The findings also indicated that if the new English language reform and policy turn out to be successful at the national level, the government is necessarily required to take actions towards elimination of the potential impediments which block the materialization of the new curriculum.