English and English language teaching (ELT) in Iran, as an issue interwoven with cultural, social and political conditions, is gaining much attention. The publication of some recent works on the topic is evidence to the claim.Footnote ¹ Among them, English Language Teaching in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Innovations, Trends and Challenges, edited by Chris Kennedy and published in 2015 by the UK’s British Council, is a welcome and timely addition to the scholarship on Iranian ELT. This collection, as its blurb claims, provides an informed overview of English language teaching in the Islamic Republic of Iran from the viewpoint of local practitioners and researchers, for the enrichment of ELT professionals worldwide.

The book contains a total of thirteen chapters, organized around the three themes suggested by the title of the collection, namely innovations, trends and challenges. Reviewing the chapter topics and their content reveals that the volume covers a range of issues, including language policy (chapters 1 and 2), syllabus and materials design (chapters 5, 9 and 11), methodology (chapters 6, 7 and 8), and teacher training (chapters 12 and 13), with examples drawn from the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education, and from public and private sectors. Exploring the topic on various levels such as state, institutional and classroom, and through qualitative and quantitative methodologies, the book illustrates the developments of English language education in Iranian society.

The volume opens with an overview by Chris Kennedy. Here, Kennedy, while highlighting the purpose of compiling the collection, attempts to provide a mosaic, although inevitably incomplete, of ELT developments in Iran, in order to give readers a picture of the variety of impressive professional activity in the country. The editor hopes this volume’s content provides a state-of-the-art baseline of interest and use to those outside of Iran, and encourages others working inside Iran to continue to explore local connections between ELT theory and practice. Doing so, he briefly introduces the three themes that the chapters have been grouped around—i.e. innovations, trends and challenges.

In reviewing Kennedy’s significant contribution, some points merit more elaboration. First, some chapters are more informative and better suited to the title and aim of the book. Among them, chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 10 and 11 seem more relevant and distinctive. In the following, the three chapters discussing challenges, innovations and trends are briefly introduced.

The first chapter, as one of the most significant in the volume, deals with the issue of English education in Iran from a broader perspective. The authors encounter the issue through the lens of language policy, which is mostly neglected in the available literature on the topic. Reviewing the ups and downs of English in contemporary Iran, they critically reflect on the state’s position. In their opinion, the unformed policies and haphazard practices in the realm of ELT in Iran’s education system, which are mostly rooted in the state’s ambivalent position, has led to creating a situation in which whether there should be “more or less English” remains an open question.

Chapter 5, giving an informed history of ELT materials in Iran, not only shows the ups and downs of ELT textbook development in the Iranian formal education system, but also informs readers of recent innovations in the field of ELT textbook development in Iranian high schools. To be more precise, the focus of this chapter is mainly the development, implementation and evaluation of a new series entitled Prospect, but prior to that, a brief account of the approach and design of old materials from 1939 to 2010 is given.

Chapter 11 indicates a new trend in Iranian ELT derived from and influenced by higher-order socioeconomic and political developments occurring in Iran and in the wider world. As Kennedy points out, the authors of this chapter see international trends such as globalization impacting on higher education (HE) worldwide, leading to HE institutions and transnational student mobility, developments which in turn have affected Iranian state and private universities in general and Master’s ELT programs in particular (p. 7). Reporting three changes in MA TEFL programs in this chapter (i.e. changes from below; quality or quantity; and publish or perish), the authors maintain that this constellation of global and local phenomena merits further investigation.

Second, some important issues especially with regard to the recent innovations in Iranian ELT are neglected or missing in the volume: issues such as English for academic purposes (EAP) in Iran, the appearance of two versions of English as rival sectors, the newly grown critical movement in Iranian ELT settings, achievements and challenges in ELT and EAP textbook development, the advent of Iranian ELT professional networks, the new wave of published papers by Iranian ELT researchers in renowned ELT journals, etc. We believe that providing a vivid and complete picture of ELT in Iran would necessarily involve considering these aspects of the field.

For example, as noted above, studying the advent of two versions of globalized and localized English in private and public education systems, as two rival sectors, is a missing link in Kennedy’s contribution. When considering the status of ELT in Iran, it is evident that the private sector has been the main contributor to the spread of English in its international version, while the public sector has promulgated the localized version of English.Footnote ² This situation has led to the formation of a site of struggle between globalized and localized versions of English.Footnote ³ According to Borjian, these are representatives of the internationalized or Anglo-American model of English vs. the indigenized or localized model of English that coexist in Iran.Footnote ⁴

In conclusion, while some of the chapters seem slightly incongruous considering the focus of the book and some important issues are neglected, this well-written book can be used as a reference for any researcher on the topic.