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One of the main shortcomings of the Iranian educational system is its focus on training students to succeed in different testing/assessment practices. In this regard, primary emphasis is still placed on memorization rather than learning dialogue, collaboration, tolerance, and life expectation for today's globalized communities. Few voices from Iranian teachers have been heard in international publications. This study collected focus group interviews from 84 Iranian primary school teachers in Tehran, Shiraz, and Yazd. Findings show that the interviewed teachers agreed on the urgent curriculum changes, including English, Law, and Entrepreneurship in the primary teaching. Additionally, the educational focus should be broadened from the current emphasis on assessment from the early years of schooling.

Despite technological advancements in engineering, medicine, agriculture, food, and health; we live in a global community of incidents, challenges, and crises, contrary to the hope of living in a 21st century utopia. Child labour can be seen as a malignant symptom for which policy-makers and senior authorities must take immediate and effective actions to help, although such persons may be scattered throughout a country's cities. Numerous public and private organisations provide different kinds of support for child labour victims, often with some good successes. However, universities and higher education institutions generally are not participants in providing practical guidance and help for outside organisations, either unintentionally or for purposes determined by their own campus-bound priorities, decisions, and policies. As a novel research to investigate the lives of children of labour, we administered a multiple case study with five children to obtain their feedback concerning their lives as well as their portrayal of today's society. Then, a purposive sample of researchers/scholars (N=98) provided views on best practices and immediate as well as long run solutions for improving status and life expectancy for children of labour.

Teachers and students are the main stakeholders of educational policies in the states; hence, the higher order policies, rules, and regulations must be in alignment with their rights, values, ideologies, needs, competencies, and peculiarities of each region and district. In such a case, the classroom practice will be improved and more promising outputs will be obtained. Iranian previous language programs failed to enhance students' communicative competence and linguistic needs to survive at the international level; hence, an educational reform occurred to change the language curricula and English textbooks. A total of 86 Iranian English language teaching (ELT) teachers were selected through snowball sampling to find their role in the recent REFORM in Iranian ELT curricula and policies. Analysis of oral interviews and online focus groups data was conducted through Strauss and Corbin's constant comparative method and illuminated the status quo of reform and policies, the marginalization of teachers as the sole implementers in language classrooms, and suggestions for teachers' involvement in educational policies. These findings stress that a change within higher education policy makers' attitude toward engagement of teachers within educational policy and decision-makings improves the classroom outputs.

One of those features that set human societies apart from animal societies is the use of language. Language is a vital part of every human culture and is a powerful social tool that we master at an early age. A second feature of humans is our ability to solve complex problems. For centuries philosophers have questioned whether these two abilities are related and, if so, what the nature of the relationship between language and thought is. At the beginning of the last century psychologists joined this debate and it is a topic that is currently generating a lot of research. Another factor in the study of language and thought is the role of culture. When we study a language from another country we see that it is not just the words and grammar that are different but the customs and traditions as well. Even the ideas of that culture and the way of dealing with life can be different. There are a number of views on the nature of the relationship between language and thought. But here we are going to explore one of those views, the linguistic relativity hypothesis (LRH), concerning that the language a speaker uses influences the way the speaker thinks.

The focus of education during K-12 and Higher Education (HE) in Iran is on theoretical empowerment of students; therefore, our students get an illusion of knowing. In fact, what happens is not learning and understanding; rather, it is verbatim transfer of available information in the textbooks into the students' minds. It might be because the students and teachers (as the main stakeholders of the education) are the least powerful parties within the pyramid of power amongst educational practitioners and policymakers. It means their voice, feedback, needs, and ideologies have no place in the educational decisions and policies. In alignment with the mainstream of the present research; it is an innovative idea to explore the students' living/studying experience during K-12, and their ideals and expectations from higher education studies. To do so, we asked 60 university students to portray their experience (in a phenomenological research design) concerning living and studying through K-12 and their ideals and expectations from Higher Education. Students' drawings are the main source of data collection and inductive analysis of data is administered to find students' responses which are categorized under three major and six minor themes, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Working culture in organizations reminds us that there should be facilitative atmosphere in an organization if the main goal is to achieve optimum efficiency. It happens if all the stakeholders' rights are taken into account without deviation of their rights, roles, values, and voices. Employees are one of the major contributing groups in each organization which are at the top of researchers' focus for further investigations. Universities and higher education institutions are also organizations with specific predefined roles and responsibilities based on the national, regional, and international goals, necessities, and ideals of the countries; while in some cases, these needs and goals might also change based on the rapid pace of changes in the global educational market. Here, 67 male employees from three Iranian higher education institutions were purposefully selected to participate in the study as we aim to identify the employees' views on and reactions towards working culture at their universities. Data analysis through Strauss and Corbin's Constant Comparative method illuminated the employees' total dissatisfaction specifically concerning colleagues' mutual relationships, biased and unfair managers' looks towards some employees, and their fear of being kicked out of the organization if their ideas are expressed within the context of the organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of student-centered classrooms, empowering students with communicative competences to be able to voice their ideas in the surrounding community, powerless and marginalized strata, are conspicuous and prevalent in recent research articles. Teachers are well-acquainted with pertinent underpinnings and theories of teaching methodologies; and some research is also conducted to see how those learned theories in pre-service and in-service programs are implemented in their real-life classrooms. But, the teachers’ reflection on implementation of their teaching practices in classrooms is still a venue which needs further investigation within an international scope. Here, my own teaching practice within a period of two semesters is reflected through the 61 male and female students’ sharp and meticulous eyes, which is reflected in their written responses to the posed question at the end of their final exams, and some of my notes from their comments in each of their classes. The Constant Comparative method was then used to unearth students’ comments and feedback on both my personality as an English-language teacher, and my teaching practice respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

University students' ratings of teaching and teachers' performance are used in many parts of the world for the evaluation of faculty members at colleges and universities. Even though these ratings receive mixed reviews, there is little conclusive evidence on the role of the intervening variable of teacher and student gender in these ratings. Possible influences resulting from gender-related differences in different sociocultural contexts, especially where gender combination in student and faculty population is not proportionate, have not been adequately investigated in previous research. This study aimed to examine Iranian university students' ratings of the professional performance of male and female university teachers and to explore the differences in male and female university students' evaluation of teachers of the same or opposite gender. The study was a questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey with a total of 800 randomly selected students in their different years of undergraduate study (307 male and 493 female students, reflecting the proportion of male and female students in the university) from different faculties at the University of Kashan, Iran. The participants rated male and female teachers' performance in observing university regulations, relationship with colleagues, and relationships with students. The researchers used descriptive statistics, means comparison inferential statistics and focus-group interview data to analyze and compare the students' ratings. The results of one-sample t-test, independent samples t-test, and Chi-square analyses showed that a) overall, male university teachers received significantly higher overall ratings in all areas than female teachers; b) male students rated male teachers significantly higher than female students did; and c) female students assigned a higher overall mean rating to male teachers than to female teachers but this mean difference was not significant. These results are studied in relation to the findings in the related literature and indicate that gender can be an important intervening variable in university students' evaluation of faculty members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]