Reconceptualising ELT research pedagogy in the Iranian higher education context

Abstract

ABSTRACT One of the significant drawbacks of the English Language Teaching (ELT) Ph.D. programme in the Iranian ELT setting is the insufficiency of the research courses offered in the current curriculum, which do not adequately address the Ph.D. candidates needs, and this issue was not tackled in the field. Therefore, adopting a qualitative approach, this research aimed to investigate the possibilities and challenges of reconceptualising ELT higher education research pedagogy from a content-oriented into a learning-oriented approach from ELT Ph.D. candidates’ and instructors’ perspectives. To do so, 20 ELT Ph.D. candidates and eight ELT university instructors of both genders were selected from different Iranian universities based on convenience sampling as the participants. The context under investigation is that of Ph.D. candidates researching into ELT. This study employed an individual semi-structured interview as the instrument for gathering data. The data were analysed using the descriptive qualitative content analysis method, and the results showed that increasing the research methodology courses, changing the research instructors’ conceptions, decreasing the instructors’ workload, and specifying funds for escalating instructors’ motivation are the possibilities of tackling the current challenges from the ELT instructors’ views. In addition, the results indicated that from the ELT Ph.D. candidates’ views, adding a fieldwork course to the ELT curriculum, designing and implementing criteria for instructors’ performance evaluation, decreasing the number of Ph.D. candidates, and holding the extracurricular activities are the possibilities of tackling the current challenges. The findings may hold some implications for policymakers, curriculum designers, ELT instructors, and ELT graduate students.