The Qualitative study of Stakeholders’ Perceptions on Challenges and Opportunities of Implementing Fundamental Reform Document of Education and English Teaching Programme in Iran

Abstract

The current paper aimed to investigate the main stakeholders’ perception regarding Fundamental Reform Document of Education (FRDOE) in Iran and the related challenges and opportunities. To this end, the qualitative study was run by interviewing four groups of stakeholders, namely, one policy-maker, one material writer, three teacher trainers, and thirteen language teachers. After validating and evaluating the credibility, nine interview questions were run and inductive bottom up thematic analysis was applied in order to extract the codes. The findings illustrated that the ELT programme has not been regarded as the required necessity in FRDOE because of the political challenges with the West. It is not even considered as the L2 in the educational policy; therefore, the current trend in the EFL programme cannot be regarded as the fundamental reform. In order to fulfill the requirement of ELT in Iran and be at the satisfactory level, the FRDOE is recommended to be revised and the language teachers, in particular, should be involved in preparing materials for English setting in the Ministry of Education of Iran.