Aspects of ‘English language education’ policies in Iran: ‘Our own beliefs’ or ‘out of who you are’?

Abstract

The worldwide English language teaching enterprise is mostly known by its professional and practical features such as teaching methodology and proficiency tests which tend to overshadow the cultural politics of language education and broader policy-level issues. To probe aspects of such less-addressed concerns and with a consideration of the crucial role of policies in education, including English language education, in this paper we explore officially stated English teaching policies in Iran as well as implicitly embraced de facto policy orientations in this area and their possible (mis)matches. Four major national documents bearing policy messages for English language education are examined as sources of overt national policies in this regard. Moreover, to observe parts of the related covert policies, we employ data obtained from interviews with teachers of private language teaching institutes as representative settings of real-life English teaching in Iran. Based on the illustration of the two types of policies and specifically considering the sociocultural implications of embracing or avoiding elements of these policies, we raise some concerns regarding the overall direction of English language education in Iran that could apply to the wider non-English-speaking world as well.