دکتر ناصرالدین علی تقویان

In the present study, an attempt has been made to explain the theoretical elements of the transcultural approach (English as an international language) to learning English as a foreign language or as second language by introducing the philosophy of the English curriculum as a foreign language.The main points of the study are to determine the position of this approach among the existing approaches and its distinctive features in the realm of curriculum philosophy and also to examine its capacity to respond to the challenge hegemonic features of English in the age of globalization. The results indicate that the transcultural approach based on interdisciplinary research, provides explanations based on linguistic conceptualization relying on the cultural schemas of non-native learners and speakers, through which a variety of English worlds are recognized. It is known as a kind of English localization..

Artificial space and environment play important roles in the formation of identity, intellectual and cultural structure and the lifestyle of the individuals and can influence the creation, intensification and/or reduction of their psychological and social problems. The present study has been prepared and produced with the objective of attaining solutions to the facilitation of identification process and reduction of intellectual, social and cultural stresses of the university students in academic educational space(s). The study is originally drawn on a field research. The research has been conducted herein on five selected state universities in Tehran based on a mixed survey method and the data have been collected using interviews and questionnaires. The findings of the interviews with the university professors, officials and cultural experts of the ministry of sciences, research and technology have been obtained based on snowball Delphi method and the findings of the questionnaires and interviews for performing students’ need assessment have been obtained based on cluster sampling method and this section’s findings have been analyzed using SPSS software. To analyze the current social-spatial status of the studied universities, as well, interviews were made with the academic cultural activists. The study results are indicative of the idea that two scales, namely creation of a sense of attachment and sociability, are of a greater importance as viewed by the academic experts, in contrast to the other factors. The university students, as well, were found believing that the cultural and social as well as the contextual spaces existent in the universities do not respond to their needs and such problems as shortage of sufficient space, facilities and appropriate equipment, inflexibility, inadequate lighting in these spaces were pointed out. In the end, suggestions will be presented in a classified manner based on the study findings.

This article examines the underlying approach of Iran National Curriculum to foreign language education. To this aim, it is necessary to refer to higher ranking writs such as ‘The Writ of Fundamental Development of Education’. The methodological approach of this article is ‘critical theory’, which seeks to reveal and criticize the ideological aspects of educational settings and practices. The data are mainly collected from the official documents about education, which have been obtained through library and data-base searching. The results of data analysis show that those parts of National Curriculum that are related to foreign language education have the advantage of taking into account the new theories of language education. However, at the same time it suffers from two crucial problems: 1) being affected by the ideological sphere of higher ranking writs, and 2) ignoring the normativity deficit inherent in the theories of language education which National Curriculum refers to. Therefore, the whole approach of National Curriculum to language education lacks the moral and normative aspects.

This article is about studying girl students’ gender miseries in the Iranian university. The population of the university is the only mixed sex population in an official and governmental space in which the population is highly by cultural circulation and variations. Due to this fact, the gender encountering happens a lot through the everyday relations of the university. The gender encountering of the girl students with the male professors contains a crucial importance that has been remained silent at other inquiries; however there is some information of sexual exploitation, harassment and discrimination about girl students by male professors. This article mainly concerns about a type of gender encountering, in Iranian university community, which has not been studied before. For this reason, we analyzed 10 universities and conducted in-depth interview with 146 girl students. As the result, our findings demonstrate that the principle of regarding the gender privacy, based on the Iranian culture, by male professors, when it is performed so strictly or it is ruptured then it produces the triadic consequences of gender “harassment”, “discrimination” and “exploitation”. Thus, the inevitable result of these factors is the occurrence of gender misery for girl students.

Is identity a heritage inherited from the past or a choice for the future In this question, the concept of time is presupposed. Thus, my point of departure is analyzing the concept of time. Then the relation between the concept of time and social theory will be examined to maintain that sociology is the science of space rather than the science of time. History, however, is the science of time which, in its Hegelian version, has a strong connection with the paradigm of the philosophy of consciousnesses. This paradigm would not allow sociology to be established, because sociology is the theory of action rather than the theory of consciousness. For this very reason, the establishment of sociology in the late nineteenth century was contemporaneous with the crisis of the philosophy of consciousness. The focal point of this crisis was the concept of subject, which itself was both the base of modern philosophy and the focus of modern society. But Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Romanticist Movement radically criticized the concept of subject and thus brought about crisis for modern society. The establishment of sociology was a response to such a crisis. It was a turning point by which we became aware of the heaviness and harmfulness of tempocentrism and instead point to the usefulness of topocentrism. After this theoretical discussion, some problems of tempocentristic approach to identity in Iranian social science will be referred to show how this approach is laden with the past, and therefore, unable to regard the future. The Iranian social sciences inability to develop an action theory seems to be rooted in its tempocentrism. In order to find a way out of this dead-end and open some new horizons in the sphere of theory and practice, the Iranian sociology need to throw down the approach to identity as a heritage from the past and adopt it as a choice for the future. Finally, I will discuss rational identity and its relation to social science.

In this article, we have tried to reconstruct some of the implications of socio-cultural approach for language education, with a view to the theory of discourse ethics.Our main concept is based on the idea that although socio-cultural approach has had many advantages for the field of language education, it has not been able to give a proper moral aspect to language education due to the lack of normative resources for explaining how to reach mutual understanding and agreements in linguistic interactions. It is emphasized that this deficit can be amended by the theory of discourse ethics. After all, the implications of this normative socio-cultural approach are explored in the areas of language-educational research, teaching and evaluation. The moral aspects of these three areas are highlighted.

In this article، on the basis of Habermas’ universal pragmatics، we have tried to indicate that empirical pragmatics in linguistics، suffers from ‘normativity deficit’ in the field of foreign language education. What we mean by ‘normativity deficit’، is the lack of normative resources required for judging the validity claims inherent in social interactions. Since agreement on the validity claims is fundamental for reaching mutual understanding and establishing linguistic communications، empirical-pragmatic approach، due to its ‘normativity deficit’ would not be able to give proper moral-educational thread to the field of foreign language education.

The major problem in conducting interdisciplinary research projects is that in these projects two methodological model deploy against each other: quantitative method used in natural sciences on the one hand، and qualitative method used in human and social sciences on the other hand. As a result of such a problem، useful and constructive dialogue among the experts of different scientific fields seems to have reached a deadlock. The problem of ‘translatability’، too، has emerged out of the above problem. So، paying attention to language and its communicative criteria has come to focus. In this article، firstly، by considering the roots of such a problem and mentioning the theoretical foundations of the both methodological models، the deadlock of communication between scientific fields have been analyzed. Then، from the perspective of the theory of communicative action and universal pragmatics based on the critical theory، it is proposed that applying the method of ‘critical hermeneutics’ can break the deadlock. Not to mention that the methodological model of this article itself is based on Habermas’s communicative research method.