Iranian high school students ’ beliefs about language learners: A qualitative study

Abstract

Abstract: This study aims at examining the metaphors created by two groups of language learners in Iranian high schools (43 males and 43 females) in Famenin. Learners were required to write the metaphors which truly conceptualized their perceptions of the English educational system in Iran. Their metaphors were categorized based on the taxonomy developed by the scholars in the field (Martinez, 2001). The results highlighted remarkable points which the most important one is that; in Iran, still, most of learners work based on the principles of the behaviorists, these findings are compatible with those of Pishghadam and Mirzaee (2008) and Pishghadam et al. (2011) which asserted that Iran’s educational system is still under the influence of modernist, behaviorist and positivist views of learning