Official Postgraduate Curriculums of TPSOL in Iran: Evaluation of Educational Objectives and Vertical Alignment

Given the significance of teaching Persian to speakers of other languages as a sub-discipline of applied linguistics and scant studies looking into its intended curriculum, the present paper sought to evaluate the educational objectives represented in the policy documents of the curriculums at the two levels of M.A. and Ph.D. guided by Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). It further examined the vertical statistical alignment between the sets of educational objectives drawing on Porters et al.’s alignment analysis (2007). In doing so, the latest curriculum standards or policy documents published by the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology were obtained. The knowledge types and cognitive levels tapped by the standards were identified, codified, and descriptively analyzed using the checklist developed by Rezvani and Zamani (2012). Porter et al.'s (2007) statistical alignment formula was also used to assess the vertical alignment between the educational objectives of the two levels. The results of the study revealed that educational objectives at both levels represented mainly lower-order cognitive processes and knowledge types at the expense of overlooking the higher-order ones. It was also found that M.A. and Ph.D. educational objectives were statistically and vertically aligned with one another suggesting the adequate harmony of them as two sequential programs. The paper finally discusses the implications of the findings for policy-makers and educators in the Iranian higher education context. Extended Abstract: In general, any educational system consists of three essential components of intended, implemented, and attained curriculums, and for any multi-componential system to yield the intended outcomes, there ought to be harmony among the components. Among these three components, intended curriculums or policy documents play a pivotal role in any educational system, as they set the aims of the programs and lead the way; therefore, it is essential that their efficacy be evaluated systematically. Although intended curriculums are of paramount importance in Iran’s centralized higher educational context, few studies have evaluated higher education curriculum standards. The present study aimed at evaluating the official curriculum standards of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages (TPSOL) in Iranian higher education. Using Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) as the theoretical framework of the study, it first examined the educational objectives represented in the policy documents of the courses at the two levels of M.A. and Ph.D., followed by examining the vertical statistical alignment between the educational objectives targeted in these two sets of course standards. To do so, the latest policy documents of M.A. and Ph.D. curriculums published and mandated by Iran’ Ministry of Science Research and Technology in 2015 were sought. The documents generally present the courses to be offered in the programs, highlight the most important objectives and discussion topics of each course, clarify the skills and abilities that students may attain after passing each course, recommend some most classical readings and resources for each course, and suggest assessment methods and criteria. The checklist developed by Rezvani and Zamani (2012) was employed to identify and tally the knowledge types and cognitive levels tapped by the curriculum standards of TPSOL at Master’s and Ph.D. levels. The documents’ contents were thoroughly content-analyzed and the general perspectives, objectives, plans, and skills to be acquired were regarded as units of analysis. All action verbs and nouns were identified, interpreted, and codified following the definitions provided by the categories and subcategories in the checklist. The action verbs addressing each of the cognitive categories were annotated in the appropriate rows of the checklist, and the nouns which represented the intended knowledge types were categorized and located in relevant columns. The frequencies, percentages, and proportion of the distribution of the cognitive levels and knowledge types identified in the documents were calculated through Microsoft Excel (2016). Likewise, the totals for categories in each dimension were calculated, which helped the researchers to assess and, accordingly, explore any notable patterns in the distribution of the cognitive levels and knowledge types in the analyzed documents. By dividing the frequency of each cell to the total number of activities, the basic data were then converted to cell-by-cell proportions. In order to detect the degree of vertical alignment between the educational objectives addressed by the curriculum standards of TPSOL in master’s and Ph.D. levels, Porter et al.’s (2007) alignment index (AI) was used. The results of the study indicated that educational objectives of lower-order cognitive processes (i.e., “remember”, “understand”, and “apply”) were targeted more than those of the higher-order processes (“analyze”, “evaluate”, and “create”) at both educational levels. Among the lower-order skills at the M.A. level, as the results suggested, “remember” was excessively emphasized at the cost of neglecting other skills, with the exception of “analyze”.  However, although the lowest-order cognitive process (i.e., remember) was paid too much attention at the Ph.D. level, this was not at the expense of total neglect of higher-order skills, especially “analyze” and “create”. Yet, such an inclination towards “remember” is not very promising in a Ph.D. program. Compared to the educational objectives at the M.A. level, higher-order cognitive skills were, as expected, integrated more at the Ph.D. level, though they both attended to the lowest-order skill more noticeably. As regards the knowledge types, one can see that lower-order knowledge types were dominant at both levels, suggesting that such a tendency is common in TPSOL at the postgraduate level. Unlike the M.A. program, however, “metacognitive knowledge” was paid little attention at the Ph.D. level. Finally, with respect to the vertical alignment between the two consecutive curriculums, the PAI of 0.69 indicated that they were significantly aligned with each other in terms of educational objectives. The descriptive patterns observed made the PAI come as no surprise, as both programs paid similar attention to lower-order cognitive skills and knowledge types, and largely ignored the higher ones. Although this study seems to be the first evaluative inquiry to assess these two intended postgraduate curriculums in Iran, its findings are in keeping with those of other studies evaluating textbooks (e.g., Rezvani & Haghshenas, 2015; Riazi & Mosalanejad, 2010) and high-stakes tests (Zamani & Rezvani, 2014), indicating the heavy reliance of Iran’s education system on lower-order cognitive skills and knowledge types. The results of the study may have significant implications for those involved in higher education. Policy-makers might benefit from the results in developing new higher education curriculums and revising the current programs to redirect the attention to higher-order knowledge types and thinking skills particularly in postgraduate curriculums. Educators at the forefront of the higher education are recommended to introduce variety into course syllabuses in concert with but demanding more higher-order knowledge types and cognitive skills. This will, in turn, pay off for the current postgraduate students and prospective instructors and educators.