There are many challenges and difficulties faced by the Iraqi learners in their studies inside the traditional classroom. These are attributed to a number of reasons such as the limitation of time, the difficulty of understanding the course material, the limited interaction among the learners and between them and the lecturers, and the delay in providing feedback, and so on. The emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) had an impact on the learning process for the past few years. Yet, there are still a number of questions about how to meet the learners’ needs of through distance learning via MOOC particularly for the Iraqi learners, as evidenced by the very high drop-out rates in the current MOOC courses. The researchers also do not understand deeply the learners’ needs, the different learners’ cultures and experiences in MOOCs. To help build such a concept, the researchers of this study conducted an in-depth investigation on the motivated learners and their perceptions and experiences of learning by a qualitative survey (interviews) at Baghdad & Tikrit Universities. The aim of this study is to examine whether Iraqi Higher Education Institutions need blended MOOC to support the traditional learning in Iraq. The results display that the majority of the participants need the blended learning to reduce the obstacles and challenges in the traditional learning and current MOOCs models. The findings also disclose that the students prefer learning through blended learning based on their environment (language and culture) rather than the current MOOCs courses.

This article seeks to render problematic the ideological underpinnings and theoretical conceptions, or lack thereof, of teacher education in the education system of the Republic of South Sudan. It uses the emergent perspective to question the construction of the country‟s Teacher Persona as envisioned in the legal and policy frameworks such as the General Education Act 2012 and the National General Education Policy (2017-2027). The Government sees these instruments as an essential catalyst to professionalize teaching and attract candidates of high calibre to the teaching profession using the political model as an offshoot of its paternalist and utilitarian national ideology to control and guarantee the quality of the teacher education enterprise. The political model, however, needs the generative practice of the institutional model and the replicative feature of the professional model to provide structure, stability and continuity to teacher education in South Sudan. This is particularly so given the fact that the current theoretical approach to teacher education at the curriculum level is informed by technical rationalist inclinations that essentially favour a strong behaviourist payload, a split of theory and practice, and a disconnect between training institutes and universities. In the same vein, the study points out that the greatest disservice to teacher education in South Sudan in terms of school outcomes has been the structural disconnect between the existing school curriculum and teacher education curriculum, critically failing to capture and engage the official standpoint of valid knowledge drawn upon to teach students in schools. A proper way of developing a national framework for teacher education is to state what good teachers effectively know, do and value. There is a need, therefore, for a new transformative model of teacher education that offers an idealistic, ethical thrust (character) and a specialist, exclusive power (competence) to future South Sudan‟s Teacher Persona, equipped with enquiry as its signature feature and as an antidote to a reductionist view. In that lies the promise to place premium in the country‟s education system.

This research is undertaken at the Secondary Level of Bangladesh Open University (BOU). It attempts to present the frequency of Code-switching and students‟ perception towards it and their functions in facilitating EFL learning. Using questionnaires as a method of data collection, the findings reveal that instructors frequently code-switched between Bangla and English. This phenomena was related to both teachers‟ and students‟ language competence. Students exhibit positive perceptions towards it as a learning tool. Analyses of data reveal that Code-switching helps students to learn their lessons. Moreover, the students are welcoming codeswitching very much.