With the dissemination of the concept of intercultural citizenship and the growing demand for citizens to communicate in settings with a kaleidoscopic array of cultural diversity, EFL textbooks should reflect these multicultural values besides their attention to language. This study examines cultural contents/themes from written passages and pictures of Vision series, the Iranian senior high school textbooks. To this end, the cultural contents (source, target, international cultures) and cultural themes (big ‘C’ and little ‘c’) were qualitatively extracted. The results of the quantitative content analysis revealed that there were not any significant differences among the three books in terms of cultural categories. However, source cultural content gained higher frequency as compared to others; Big ‘C’ themes gained statistically more frequency than the little ‘c’ which could be the aftermath of the authors’ sole focus on L1 communicative competence. The study further concludes that the textbooks failed to foster intercultural communicative competence and intercultural communication. The findings have implications for syllabus designers and material developers to integrate the principles of English as an international language in their practice by further including target and international cultural content types. Manuscript profile

This convergent mixed-methods study explored the effectiveness of inquiry-based and expository instruction in shaping student teachers' conceptions of assessment. Forty-three BA-level TEFL sophomores were assigned to either an experimental or control group, receiving instruction through inquiry-based or expository approaches, respectively. The pre- and post-intervention phases involved administering the Students' Conceptions of Assessment (SCoA) questionnaire {revalidated for Iranian EFL student teachers) and a metaphor analysis survey in both groups. The study yielded a key finding: a notable divergence between the quantitative and qualitative results. While the metaphor analysis indicated a significant shift in assessment conceptions post-intervention, the quantitative data (SCoA questionnaire) revealed no statistically significant differences in assessment conceptions across instruction types. Despite the lack of statistically significant differences, it is nonetheless possible that student teachers gained valuable insights into their own assessment perceptions within the learning and teaching process. These findings hold pedagogical implications for EFL learners and teachers alike. Manuscript profile