چکیده:
Given the significance and sensitivity of the Iranian Ph.D. program entrance
exams, such high-stakes exams are assumed to exert considerable influence
on Iranian public higher educational curriculums. The present study was
motivated to scrutinize the EFL instructors’ insights to explore the potential
washback effects of the new Iranian TEFL Ph.D. program entrance exam on
their teaching methodology, class assessment, and syllabus design. To this
end, the researchers conducted in-depth interviews with ten experienced
instructors teaching M.A. courses at four Iranian universities. The results
emerging from the close qualitative content analysis of the respondents’
introspection indicated that the new exam, despite its considerable
significance, fails to generate substantial effects on the instructors’ teaching
methodology and class assessment due to the inconsistency between the
objectives supposed to be met by the new exam administration and those
expected to be achieved in TEFL M.A. and Ph.D. programs. Further, it was
revealed that the new exam, on the contrary, substantially influences the
instructors’ syllabus design through conditioning their material and content
selection. This study further discusses the implications of the findings in the
context of Iranian TEFL higher education
خلاصه ماشینی:
"Further, in their study on the washback effect of Iranian undergraduate program entrance exam on high school instructors’ classroom behaviors, Salehi and Yunus (2012) suggested that the UPEE negatively and implicitly influenced English teachers to teach to the content and format of the exam.
Accordingly, the incentive behind the present study was to undertake this strand of research by examining the washback effects of the new Iranian TEFL PPEE on university instructors’ teaching methodology, class assessment, and syllabus design.
As far as the exam impacts on instructors’ teaching methodologies and class assessments are of concern, the high-stakes exams are assumed to be the influential determiners of instructors’ tendencies in their pedagogical and judgmental classroom practices (Cheng, 2005; Davies, 1990; Green, 2007; Hayes & Read, 2003; Hughes, 2003; Loumbourdi, 2013; Wall & Alderson, 1993).
In addition, the new TEFL PPEE’s tendency to tap its applicants’ low-level cognitive competence (see Rezvani & Sayyadi, in press) was also deemed as an underlying factor inducing the instructors to abstain from tailoring their teaching methods and class assessment practices to preparing their students for the PPEE.
The results emerging from the close analysis of the respondents’ insights indicated that the new exam, despite its considerable criticality, fails to exert remarkable influence on the instructors’ teaching methodology and class assessment owning to its defective validity and its tendency to tap the applicants’ low-level cognitive capacities."