Rendering Iran Language-In-Education Policy Problematic: A CDA Poststructural Approach

• Published in: New Zealand journal of educational studies 2023-12, Vol.58 (2), p.493-508
• Main Author: Rasti, Alireza
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communicative Competence (Languages); Discourse Analysis; Education; Educational Policy; Foreign Countries; Language of Instruction; Policy Analysis; Policy Formation; Problem Solving; Second Language Instruction; Second Language Learning; Teaching Methods
• ISSN: 0028-8276; 2199-4714
• DOI: 10.1007/s40841-023-00292-5

Due to their mostly normative and legitimatory nature, public policies at large and education policies in particular are liable to frame perceived problems in the social domain as seen through the policy-making elite’s perspective and seek to advance solutions to them. On the surface, the staged process of policy design, implementation, and evaluation might be assumed to run a smooth course yielding results to policy actors engaged one way or another with policy processes. Analytic tools and concepts from Poststructuralism and Critical Discourse Analysis have the potential to shed light on how policies unfold and to expose the official version of reality, which might be incongruous with the needs and wants of frontline educators. In keeping with this, the present research has examined Iran's foreign language education policy texts in an attempt at showing how policy as a discursive construct could be problematised so that it could be seen a site of struggle rather than a mere process of effecting change. The results showed, inter alia, that the Communicative Approach is promoted as a panacea for all the ills plaguing language education practitioners while glossing over the agency of policy end-line workers and leaving off significant considerations from the language pedagogy equation.