The Role of Social Class and Religiousness in Shaping Iranian Parents' Ideological Conceptions of English and Arabic Language Learning

This article reports an investigation into the ideological conceptions Iranian parents have about learning of English and Arabic languages, and how such conceptions are shaped by social class and religiousness. This was a quantitative correlational study wherein data were collected using a researcher-made survey with a Likert-scale question from 400 Iranian parents regarding their attitudes toward English and Arabic language learning. The participants were selected by strati-fied random sampling, representing different social classes and degrees of religiousness. In order to find out how data differ according to the social class and religiousness, ANOVA was con-ducted. Later on, Pearson's correlation analysis was conducted to explore the relationship be-tween parents' ideological conceptions of the learning of both languages-English and Arabic. It looks like social class highly influences the opinion about English learning whereas religiousness is a more determining factor that shapes attitudes toward Arabic learning. Moreover, parents' ideologies about the two languages were in a positive correlation, which means the ideologies do not clash with but complement each other. Based on the findings, a number of recommendations for educational policy founded on a balancing between the religious and secular dimensions of language learning were pointed out, notably: providing equal opportunity for English education for people in different classes while enhancing the teaching of Arabic to meet cultural and reli-gious identity. It is in this regard that teachers' training programs should highlight the issue of sociolinguistic sensitivity and respect linguistic diversities of parents. These can inform curricu-lum developments within the Iranian educational system and encapsulate both global and cultur-al imperatives.