Seyyed‐abdolhamid Mirhosseini
Biographic Data
| ID | 127728 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Seyyed‐abdolhamid Mirhosseini |
| GIVEN NAMES | Seyyed‐abdolhamid |
| FAMILY NAME | Mirhosseini |
| SIGNATURE | MIRHOSSEINI S A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Alzahra University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8758-1175 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
“It's Putonghua-accented English”: Language ideologies of mainland Chinese English teachers in Hong Kong
With Hong Kong's increasing integration with Chinese Mainland and a shortage of qualified English teachers, English teachers from Mainland have become an expanding presence in the region's English teaching profession. Yet their experiences remain insufficiently explored. Guided by a narrative inquiry design with an integrative framework of language teacher identity (LTI), this study explores how 37 English teachers from Chinese Mainland construct…
Is the dominance complete: The (im)possibility of projecting diverse sociocultural voices in L2 English publishing
With the established status of English as the default language of international publication, there is a need for investigating the sociopolitics of its dominance in this domain, specifically including the sociocultural concerns surrounding academic writing and publishing in English by speakers of other languages. This study examined academic’s opinions and attitudes about the necessity and possibility of projecting non-Anglophone English writers’…
Telling China’s story in English: Teachers navigating the decolonial turn
Within the current global reimagining of English language education through a decolonial lens, China represents a unique example of a top-down reform agenda. Unlike grassroots decolonial initiatives in many Global South contexts, China’s approach is embedded in state policy that reframes English to promote national culture and enhance international discourse power – captured in the ideological call to ‘tell China’s story well’. Adopting an ecolog…
English spread’ at the interface of national and institutional EMI policies in China
With the expansion of English medium instruction (EMI) in universities around the world, China is witnessing an increasing emergence of EMI. Although EMI research in China has investigated instructional challenges as well as some policy issues at institutional levels, considering recent arguments for critical views of EMI, there is extensive space in this context for exploring ideological underpinnings of EMI policies. In this study, we examine i…
Even the Culture Day is in English”: Teachers' Critical EMI Awareness in Hong Kong
With the massive expansion of English medium instruction (EMI) in universities, EMI is now seeking a standing in schools of non‐Anglophone countries. While the history of K–12 EMI in postcolonial settings can bear important lessons for other contexts, school‐level EMI research focuses on instructional challenges, and critical insights about the dominance of English in postcolonial places are less widely explored. In this study, I examine EMI teac…
If I go, who stays?’: Iranian university students’ perceptions of the sociopolitics of emigration
The inclination towards leaving Iran and residing abroad is growing among many Iranians as a result of multifaceted socioeconomic and political dynamics, but understandings of emigration remain underexplored in this context. This study delves into how Iranian university students perceive emigration and how their perceptions are shaped in this regard. A diverse group of 43 students across seven universities in Tehran participated in interviews to …
Translanguaging and Epistemological Decentring in Higher Education and Research
This is an important volume that brings together multiple aspects of the sociopolitics of language, knowledge, and education. Intersecting these topics are epistemological arguments that question dominant modernist knowledge trends and argue for the recognition of knowledge from the Global South (Connell 2007). Such arguments have been central in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics since the question of knowledge is almost always a question …
Experiencing the “spread policy” of English: An instance of a U.S.-funded program
Overt international policies of spreading English around the world have been illustrated to exist both as historical trends as well as current undertakings by English-speaking countries. However, the contemporary processes of implementing these policies are not widely researched. To investigate an actual instance of such processes, this study explored the implementation of a U.S.-funded program for teaching English in Morocco. We examined the exp…
The pain, the pedagogy, and the politics of IELTS: A critical autobiographical inquiry
Language tests, including international high-stakes English proficiency tests widely used around the world, are to be viewed as ideological constructs connected with power relations and center–periphery demarcations at different social levels. In this paper, we examine the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) as an instance of such tests to uncover some of its underlying sociocultural functions. Adopting a critical autobiographic…
An ethnographic exploration of language policies and language teacher identity entanglements in a transnational university
As identity is increasingly conceptualized from a postmodern view, language teacher identity (LTI) is framed as a dynamic and multifaceted construct. In line with this perspective, most LTI studies rely on teachers’ narratives to examine their perceptions of so-called external influences. However, it remains unclear whether these influences are imposed by institutional structures and only encountered by teachers, or they are ideologically co-cons…
How do language education researchers attend to quality in qualitative studies
The steady expansion in qualitative research in the area of language education over the last two decades indicates the growing recognition of its importance to investigating issues of language teaching and learning. Along with this recognition, understanding and assessing the quality of qualitative studies in this area has gained increasing significance. Addressing this concern, in this research synthesis, we qualitatively explore how 236 qualita…
Only a cog in a machine: Reappraising institutionalized EAP teacher identities in a transnational context
Official policies of English language education in Iran: ‘Policy as Discourse’ in National Documents
Considering the uncontested global status of English today, overt and covert policies of English language teaching (ELT) have shaped a significant area of broader national language (education) policies. In this study we investigated nine major national policy documents to portray the overall official ELT policies in Iran. The documents were explored through qualitative content analysis in search of manifest statements and conceptual categories th…
‘Their first language … would be a resource sometimes: Preservice English teachers’ preparedness for linguistically responsive teaching
While the importance of linguistically responsive teaching (LRT) in multilingual classrooms is well documented, preservice English teachers’ conceptions of LRT and the pertinent sociocultural processes that shape their LRT conceptions and practices remain under-researched. Qualitatively examining the experiences and understandings of 15 preservice English teachers in Hong Kong shared in interviews and written reflections, this study reveals a pos…
At school, I feel interrogated: Differences in willingness to communicate in Iranian schools and private English institutes
Multiple Englishes: Multiple ways of being in the world (A conversational inquiry)
This essay emerges from an ongoing conversation between us while collaborating on various projects that have explored the role that English plays in people’s lives. One of us is an English teacher educator from Australia, the other an EFL educator from Iran now working in Hong Kong. Our conversation prompted us to reflect on English as a medium of communication between us that has enabled us to transcend the division between so-called native spea…
We have become protectors of English: Revisiting policies of publishing in English in non-Anglophone academia
In the vigorous trend of international publication as a crucial research performance indicator, English claims the status of the uncontested global language of academic publishing. In this study, after providing a sketch of the policies of writing and publishing in English in Iran (reflected in national policy documents and university bylaws), we probe the perspectives of nine Iranian higher education policy experts about these policies through s…
Probing the Sociocultural Relevance of Tesol in Three Stories of Becoming an English Teacher
Although critical views of language education have redefined teacher roles, teachers' understanding of their own position within the ideological contestations surrounding language teaching is not widely investigated. This narrative study explores the perspectives of three Iranian English language teachers on the sociocultural roles and responsibilities that they may assume for themselves and examines how such perspectives are shaped. In extensive…
Words belong to ourselves: Multiliteracies pedagogy in English language education
This study explores the possibilities and challenges of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) based on multiliteracies perspectives within New Literacy Studies (NLS). Teaching materials were developed for a group of Iranian EFL learners based on the four principles of NLS and were taught based on the same principles aiming at creating alternative language learning experiences. Class recordings, fieldnotes, interviews, and learners’ noteboo…
Covid-19 and Language Education: Lessons of a Pandemic for English Teaching
In this article, I present a thought experiment highlighting some lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic for language education. I focus on two characteristics of the pandemic and the English language teaching (ELT) industry. First, during the pandemic, humans appeared to grapple with the ancient problem of killer viruses, with modern medicine initially offering little beyond basic advice; and ELT seems to deal with old problems like teaching vocabular…
They expand their own language; God bless them: Positions of Iranian cultural activists on English in Iran
The extraordinary spread of the English language into people’s language-life around the world has made it a taken-for-granted desire for various social groups in almost all non-English-speaking countries. However, beyond the guise of a neutral global lingua franca, the learning and use of English by speakers of other languages is imbued with sociopolitical contestations. This study explores such contestations from the perspective of some Iranian …
Bridging Language Education and “New Literacy Studies”: Reinvigorating Courses of General English at an Iranian University
This article explores the opportunities and challenges created by teaching a General English (GE) course at an Iranian university based on New Literacy Studies (NLS). Over a whole semester and relying on various types of qualitative data, we examined how NLS-based pedagogy can be received as an alternative to mainstream GE instruction that is mainly based on traditional teaching of skills and components. Several bodies of data were gathered and e…
Global perspectives on language education policies
Global perspectives on language education policies." Journal of Education Policy, 35(2), pp. 283–286
The Ideological Work of English Teaching
The Ideological Work of English Teaching
International perspectives on critical pedagogies in ELT
This most recent volume from Palgrave’s ‘International Perspectives on English Language Teaching’ series represents a refreshing look at English Language Teaching (ELT) that moves beyond the usual
Discursive double-legitimation of (avoiding) another war in Obama’s 2013 address on Syria
This article explores legitimacy-building in United States President’s 2013 Address to the Nation on Syria. Based on a slightly modified version ofTheo van Leeuwen’s (2008)model of the discursive construction of legitimation and with a view of the war in Syria as the super-macro context of the Address, the investigation illustrates how the speech attempts to legitimate the prospect of a direct American military engagement in Syria on the one hand…
English Class or Speaking about Everything Class? Dialogue Journal Writing as a Critical EFL Literacy Practice in an Iranian High School
This qualitative study, employing an ethnographic research method, investigates how dialogue journal writing, which allows teachers and learners to engage in ‘written conversation’, may provide an opportunity to bring critical pedagogy and foreign language education together in a productive way in the context of a critical literacy practice. The data consisted of informal written interviews and more than 600 journal entries written by 30 16-year-…
How do language education researchers attend to quality in qualitative studies
The steady expansion in qualitative research in the area of language education over the last two decades indicates the growing recognition of its importance to investigating issues of language teaching and learning. Along with this recognition, understanding and assessing the quality of qualitative studies in this area has gained increasing significance. Addressing this concern, in this research synthesis, we qualitatively explore how 236 qualita…
Mixed Methods Research in Tesol: Procedures Combined or Epistemology Confused
Mixed methods research tends to be received as a resolution to the traditional quantitative–qualitative debate in research methodology. However, although the extended repertoire of research techniques provided by combining the two approaches may appear practically attractive, the perspective of technical inclusiveness may raise questions at a deeper conceptual level. Revisiting aspects of mixed methods in TESOL research, this article focuses on t…
"The Language of "Circule: Discursive Construction of False Referral in Iranian Teaching Hospitals
This article explores the practice of false patient out-referral by medical students in Iranian teaching hospital emergency departments. Drawing on participant-observations and interviews during eight months in six hospitals in Tehran, we investigate how discourse is appropriated to construct and legitimate out-referrals through four general strategies of sympathy, mystification, intimidation, and procrastination. Based on a critical approach to …
An ethnographic exploration of language policies and language teacher identity entanglements in a transnational university
As identity is increasingly conceptualized from a postmodern view, language teacher identity (LTI) is framed as a dynamic and multifaceted construct. In line with this perspective, most LTI studies rely on teachers’ narratives to examine their perceptions of so-called external influences. However, it remains unclear whether these influences are imposed by institutional structures and only encountered by teachers, or they are ideologically co-cons…
Probing the Sociocultural Relevance of Tesol in Three Stories of Becoming an English Teacher
Although critical views of language education have redefined teacher roles, teachers' understanding of their own position within the ideological contestations surrounding language teaching is not widely investigated. This narrative study explores the perspectives of three Iranian English language teachers on the sociocultural roles and responsibilities that they may assume for themselves and examines how such perspectives are shaped. In extensive…
They expand their own language; God bless them: Positions of Iranian cultural activists on English in Iran
The extraordinary spread of the English language into people’s language-life around the world has made it a taken-for-granted desire for various social groups in almost all non-English-speaking countries. However, beyond the guise of a neutral global lingua franca, the learning and use of English by speakers of other languages is imbued with sociopolitical contestations. This study explores such contestations from the perspective of some Iranian …
Now as a teacher”: Novice Teachers Reflect on English Language Teacher Education in Iran
This study relied on the reflections of 12 novice English language teachers and 3 supervisors to explore the status quo of teacher training in 3 private language institutes with headquarters in Tehran and about 420 language schools throughout the country. Extensive data collection was done through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and teacher diaries as well as informal peer interviews and observation of occasional meetings of …
I love foreigners’ attitudes towards life”: Reproducing lifestyles in an Iranian English language teaching context
An important aspect of learning a foreign language is encountering the sociocultural orientations associated with it. The present qualitative study focuses on an Iranian setting of English language teaching (ELT) to explore the potential reflection and reproduction of certain cultural attitudes and lifestyles in this context. A total of 200 hours of 10 ELT classes with 62 students were observed and/or recorded in 4 months, and 20 teachers and stu…
Aspects of ‘English language education’ policies in Iran: ‘ Our own beliefs ’ or ‘ out of who you are ’
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 offi…
Resisting magic waves: Ideologies of "English language teaching" in Iranian newspaper advertisements
Discourse practices play crucial roles in shaping the cultural environment of social events and, therefore, influence how they actually take place. Promotional materials and media advertisements are significant instances of such discourses through which understandings of social practices, including language education, are both reflected and shaped. In this study, I explore the advertisements of Iranian private language teaching institutes appeari…
Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning
Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World
Norman Fairclough, Analyzing discourse: Textual analysis for social research
Norman Fairclough, Analyzing discourse: Textual analysis for social research . London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. vii + 270. Hb $135.00, Pb $31.95. This latest book by Norman Fairclough is an extension of his earlier work on critical discourse analysis (CDA) (e.g., Fairclough 1989, 1995, 2001). Relying on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as his linguistic theoretical standpoint on one hand, and on social theoretical themes presented by critical th…
English Class or Speaking about Everything Class? Dialogue Journal Writing as a Critical EFL Literacy Practice in an Iranian High School
This qualitative study, employing an ethnographic research method, investigates how dialogue journal writing, which allows teachers and learners to engage in ‘written conversation’, may provide an opportunity to bring critical pedagogy and foreign language education together in a productive way in the context of a critical literacy practice. The data consisted of informal written interviews and more than 600 journal entries written by 30 16-year-…
Norman Fairclough, Analyzing discourse: Textual analysis for social research
Norman Fairclough, Analyzing discourse: Textual analysis for social research . London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. vii + 270. Hb $135.00, Pb $31.95. This latest book by Norman Fairclough is an extension of his earlier work on critical discourse analysis (CDA) (e.g., Fairclough 1989, 1995, 2001). Relying on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as his linguistic theoretical standpoint on one hand, and on social theoretical themes presented by critical th…
English and a World of Diversities: Confrontation, Appropriation, Awareness
Karmani (2005) and Kabel (2007) raise various issues on the role of English in global social and political contexts. While I am in agreement with Karmani's call for language educators to be more sharply aware of certain beliefs about the role of English in the world, I argue that the challenges debated by the authors are not exclusively about English against Islam but more broadly about language. I also argue that English as a language in itself …
Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World
Alison Sealey and Bob Carter , Applied linguistics as social science
Alison Sealey and Bob Carter , Applied linguistics as social science . New York: Continuum, 2004. Pp. xv, 239. Pb $49.95. Applied linguistics as social science underscores the essential association between language and society and attempts “to make a case for regarding the discipline of applied linguistics as a social science” (1). Although Sealey and Carter are not bringing up the issue for the first time (despite the impression that the book se…
Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning
An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method ‐ Edited by Thomas Ricento
The Language of Pain: Expression or Description? - By Chryssoula Lascaratou
"The Language of "Circule: Discursive Construction of False Referral in Iranian Teaching Hospitals
This article explores the practice of false patient out-referral by medical students in Iranian teaching hospital emergency departments. Drawing on participant-observations and interviews during eight months in six hospitals in Tehran, we investigate how discourse is appropriated to construct and legitimate out-referrals through four general strategies of sympathy, mystification, intimidation, and procrastination. Based on a critical approach to …
Ideologies of English Language Teaching in Iranian Academic Research: Mainstream, Alternative, and Beyond
Mainstream trends of English language teaching (ELT) are predominantly constructed within the epistemological boundaries shaped by the traditional conceptions of linguistics, learning, and teaching as well as positivist research methodology. What tends to be overshadowed by such conceptions is the underlying foundational belief structure of ELT theory, research, and practice. Such beliefs may be named in various ways, including under the rubric o…
Loving but not living the vernacular: A glimpse of Mazandarani-Farsi linguistic culture in northern Iran
Traditional top-down conceptions of language policy and planning have been questioned by recent perspectives that advocate more localized accounts of language policy concerns in real-life social contexts. Schiffman’s (1996) conception of linguistic culture is one of these bottom-up approaches, which focuses on covert language policies. This study investigates some aspects of such covert orientations of speakers of the Mazandarani language towards…
Resisting magic waves: Ideologies of "English language teaching" in Iranian newspaper advertisements
Discourse practices play crucial roles in shaping the cultural environment of social events and, therefore, influence how they actually take place. Promotional materials and media advertisements are significant instances of such discourses through which understandings of social practices, including language education, are both reflected and shaped. In this study, I explore the advertisements of Iranian private language teaching institutes appeari…
“My Language is Like My Mother”: Aspects of Language Attitudes in a Bilingual Farsi-Azerbaijani Context in Iran
The consequence of globalization in many bilingual and multilingual communities appears to be the increased endangerment of language varieties and the speeding erosion of linguistic diversity. Understanding this concern and its associated issues of language contact, conflict, and maintenance may be considerably enhanced by exploring attitudes of communities towards the language varieties they live with. In this exploratory study we investigate at…
Listen to What Doctors Say: Discursive Authority in Two Persian Medical Publications
With a concern for social relations of power and authority and referring to the role of discourse in constructing and legitimating worldviews, perceptions, and practices, this study investigates particular instances of medical discourse in two distinct types of print medical media. Two sets of articles shape the overall bulk of data investigated in this research. The first set comprises 20 articles selected from Salamat medical journal which is a…
Aspects of ‘English language education’ policies in Iran: ‘ Our own beliefs ’ or ‘ out of who you are ’
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 offi…
Resistance to ‘the Known’: Counter-Conduct in Language Education
Early Metaphorical Communication: Farsi-Speaking Children Beginning to Learn Proverbs
Dominant trends of studies on child language and communication have been traditionally concerned with early words and syntax. Little attention has been paid to the emergence of metaphorical and discursive aspects of child language. However, beyond the scope of formal linguistics and traditional cognitive psychology, nonliteral language use is an integral aspect of language acquisition that needs to be dealt with in child language research. This s…
I love foreigners’ attitudes towards life”: Reproducing lifestyles in an Iranian English language teaching context
An important aspect of learning a foreign language is encountering the sociocultural orientations associated with it. The present qualitative study focuses on an Iranian setting of English language teaching (ELT) to explore the potential reflection and reproduction of certain cultural attitudes and lifestyles in this context. A total of 200 hours of 10 ELT classes with 62 students were observed and/or recorded in 4 months, and 20 teachers and stu…
Discursive double-legitimation of (avoiding) another war in Obama’s 2013 address on Syria
This article explores legitimacy-building in United States President’s 2013 Address to the Nation on Syria. Based on a slightly modified version ofTheo van Leeuwen’s (2008)model of the discursive construction of legitimation and with a view of the war in Syria as the super-macro context of the Address, the investigation illustrates how the speech attempts to legitimate the prospect of a direct American military engagement in Syria on the one hand…
Introduction to the special issue: Politics of research in language education
Sociopolitical and critical perspectives in the broad field of applied linguistics and (English) language education have shaped a growing—though still marginal—stream of discussion since they emerg
Perspectives of Iranian University Students on Learning English: A Practical Need and/or an International Policy-push
While English is embraced worldwide as a global means of communication, its teaching and learning is a contested arena of contacts between the so-called English native-speaker culture and local learner cultures. In this study, we investigate Iranian university students’ viewpoints on the necessity and justifications for learning English and their awareness of international policies of promoting this language. A group of 855 male and female studen…
Mixed Methods Research in Tesol: Procedures Combined or Epistemology Confused
Mixed methods research tends to be received as a resolution to the traditional quantitative–qualitative debate in research methodology. However, although the extended repertoire of research techniques provided by combining the two approaches may appear practically attractive, the perspective of technical inclusiveness may raise questions at a deeper conceptual level. Revisiting aspects of mixed methods in TESOL research, this article focuses on t…
The Ideological Work of English Teaching
The Ideological Work of English Teaching
International perspectives on critical pedagogies in ELT
This most recent volume from Palgrave’s ‘International Perspectives on English Language Teaching’ series represents a refreshing look at English Language Teaching (ELT) that moves beyond the usual
Writing the World in a Foreign Language
Decades of theorisation and research on the teaching and learning of second-language writing have hardly created coherent theoretically profound and practically relevant understandings of writing instruction. This article discusses the possibilities and insights created by bringing personal meaningfulness into the realm of writing pedagogy. Briefly revisiting the mainstream landscape of second-language writing theory and, more specifically, addre…
Sociology (41 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (31 works) · Linguistics (28 works) · Pedagogy (28 works) · Psychology (27 works) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (23 works) · Political science (23 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (23 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Mathematics education (16 works)