Deficiencies of Curriculum Development in Iranian Foreign Language Instruction: Developing an Optimal Strategy

Consistent changes in paradigms and theories of second language education failed to remove major deficiencies associated with traditional approaches in which “curriculum development” has not been an exception. During the past two decades some principles have been suggested under the title of post-method which include the capacity to remove some of these deficiencies. Thus, this research employed the theoretical foundations of post-method and used a mixed approach in research, which, in addition to phenomenography of the deficiencies in the aforesaid curriculum and validation of its findings, has utilized structural analysis to suggest a fitting strategy through expert views’ analysis in the matrixes of crossed impacts and balance impacts. It was found that, according to Eigen value, three main factors including process, knowledge-epistemic and political-approach are involved in the construction of the deficiencies that embrace 15 variables with significant factor loading value. Adopting linear and product-based views toward learning, ignoring consequential validity, prescriptive syllabus and washback effect were amongst major deficiencies.