National identity and civic values in the pre-revolution and post-revolution English as a foreign language textbooks in Iran

This study explores the role that national identity and civic values play in the content of current EFL textbooks at Iranian public schools. Stressing the importance of English learning as a core course in schooling and higher education in Iran resulted in the English language becoming an international lingua franca. I compared pre- and post-revolution Iranian EFL textbooks in order to find whether or not, and, if so, "how" Iranian officials adopted and presented EFL materials to educate the youth to learn, preserve, and present the Islamic ideology of the country. In Iran, the shift of government brought a new Islamic national identity combined with civic values to the Iranian educational system. I utilized a content analysis as the method to textually analyze the EFL textbooks, using a checklist to categorize the cultural content of Iranian pre- and post-revolution EFL textbooks. The following research questions guided my inquiry: (1) what kinds of religious, political, and economic changes were brought to the Iranian post-revolution EFL textbooks? (2) to what extent do the EFL textbooks being used in the national educational system in Iran contain Islamic national identity and civic values? and (3) how do these values reflect the culture of the English language in the Iranian EFL textbooks?; This study concludes that the ultimate goal of language education in post-revolution Iran appears to be the creation of model Islamic citizens within the Islamic society. Iranian pupils are presented with a very structured general notion of the world and non-Iranian individuals, a perspective which limits them to learning about Islam and shapes them into Islamic individuals focused only on serving the country.