STRATEGY FOR CULTURE
Year:2020 | Volume:13 | Issue:49|Papers Count:7

Language policy and planning, as a branch of sociology of language, under the influence of various developments in international as well as national arenas, have drawn the increasing attention of researchers and policymakers over the past few decades. Despite the undeniable significance of this interdisciplinary branch that has strong ties with international and national developments, a review of the issue of language in Iran indicates that despite the effectiveness of this discipline’ s application in solving many problems in the field of language as well as the potential forthcoming challenges, language policy and planning have been neglected both in research as well as cultural and educational macro-policymaking processes. Therefore, in this paper, while introducing this discipline and its concepts, a picture of the lingual ecosystem of Iranian society is depicted as well. In the next step, in order to underline the significance of heeding this discipline and step-by-step utilization of this approach, the status of local languages have been studied and analyzed within the proposed framework; an issue, which in the recent years, besides creating some concerns and criticisms, will be capable of turning into a challenge in the near future. The findings of this research, on the one hand, underline the necessity of serious scientific handling of this issue, and, on the other, the effectiveness of its application for removing the challenges and consolidating the political, cultural, and social foundations of the Iranian society.

Foresight is one of the most effective tools for development of long-term strategies and policies aiming at sustainable economic, political, and social development that requires a huge amount of time as well as human and financial resources. The evaluation of foresight too is a fundamental part of any foresight plan, for it provides a goal-oriented framework or structure to help the body of foresight discipline. Without this framework, there will be neither any other way for the objective description of foresight activities, nor a tool for comparison, monitoring, and learning from these activities. A review of the literature on evaluation of foresight shows that there is no theoretical consensus among researchers about the frameworks for the evaluation of foresight. Therefore, the objective of this paper is develop a comprehensive methodological framework for evaluation of science and technology’ s national foresight based on a systematic analysis of theoretical experiences and utilization of documental studies. The results of the study show that the existence of two attitudes, that is, logical and systemic, would guarantee the comprehensiveness of a foresight evaluation framework. The proposed framework, based on the logical attitude, includes certain criteria such as efficiency, proportionality, and effectiveness. Based on the systemic attitude, the proposed framework includes certain criteria such as behavioral redundancy and political effectiveness. Through the said framework, some countries’ experiences of foresight evaluation have been studied and analyzed in this research. The results show that logical attitude was predominant in most of them, while systemic criteria and items had received lesser attention.

Over the past forty years, a series of economic and technological developments at the global level along with some specific political and security events have created a particular approach to the mission of university based on its direct participation in innovation and economic development. In this regard, some ideas, including the entrepreneurial university model, due to focusing on commercialization of knowledge, university entrepreneurship, and promotion of regional innovation, have drawn wider attention of governments and policymakers. The present study, by trying to propose a more precise knowledge of the nature of entrepreneurial university, factors affecting its emergence, and consequences of its development, aims to prepare the grounds for a realistic study of the capacities and limitations of this model, which could in turn facilitate higher education’ s professional policymaking in encounter with the entrepreneurial university model. To this aim, a series of select reference and effective articles related to the entrepreneurial university model were analyzed through thematic analysis method. The results of this study show that the second academic revolution is a comprehensive theme, whose nature, stages of development along with the drivers and formation factors as well as its consequences have been explained in the mentioned model. Finally, by putting the results of this research in the context of a wider review of the literature on the role of university in innovation, the main limitations of this model were identified and discussed. Based on this study, the connotations of the theory of entrepreneurial university regarding the drivers of a change in university mission have the highest degree of compatibility with the results and evidences of other studies. But, other connotations of this theory, including the comprehensibility of the second academic revolution and its phases and consequences face several limitations. Overall, this study connotes to the limited possible grounds as well as limited desirability of the entrepreneurial university model to the extent that expressions such as the second academic revolution and the third generation universities are exaggerative and unrealistic.

Employment of suitable evaluation frameworks is one of the issues that must be taken into consideration in the national systems of science, technology and innovation. Some sporadic measures have been taken by different organizations in Iran for the evaluation of the condition of science, technology and innovation in the country, but till date no balanced monitoring and evaluation framework has been established to provide the possibility of assessment of the realization of high-level goals and collect up-to-date data about the condition of science, technology and innovation in the country. Attempts have been made in this research to identify and analyze the data existing in the related high-level documents and reports published at international level between 2014 and 2015. Thematic analysis research method was employed for the analysis of the collected data and a proposed framework has been developed. Finally, experts panel was used for the verification and confirmation of the suggested framework. Consequently, a comprehensive and balanced framework of criteria, sub-criteria and indexes was developed for monitory and evaluation of science, technology and innovation. Also, some suggestions have been given for attainment of desirable result in the application of this framework, the most important of which include commitment to organizational support in implementation, realistic division of labor among the concerned institutions and allocation of the necessary resources for collection and analysis of the necessary data.

Sharing of intellectual property rights, incurring from joint research works, plays a very important role in the success or failure of such research activities. Despite this significance, due to the complexity and involvement of various factors in the development of a suitable framework for sharing, these frameworks have not yet been extracted. Attempts have been made in this article, without proposing a specific contractual model, to merely extract the factors that affect the clinching of a contract in this regard. In order to extract these factors, the previous related studies were reviewed and the credibility of the results of some joint research works conducted in the oil and gas industries of Iran was evaluated. The findings of the research show that overall nine factors affect the facilitation of the said process: The stakeholders’ identities; the competition level and the degree of collaboration in previous studies in the industry; institutional environment; synergy/interactivity of collaboration; the specifications of the target discipline (knowledge); network’ s structure; the relative capability of members in the field of the target technology; and the position of the target technology in the lifecycle and status of patent in the industry’ s business model. It is important to try to reduce this complexity of business process, for extreme complexity causes the withdrawal of the stakeholders from collaboration due to the increase in the transaction costs.

In order to develop a model for financing Iran’ s higher education system, grounded method (Strauss and Corbin) and explorative-qualitative approach were adopted. The statistical population for this research consisted of all experts, researchers, policymakers, managers and officials in charge of financing higher education in Iran, among whom, 15 people were selected through targeted sampling method and the necessary data were collected from them through deep and semi-structured interviews. The findings of the research show that the desirable financing model is indigenous diversification of financing within the universities. In other words, the system should move from the present bipolar system based on registration fees and government’ s direct aid to an indigenous balanced system with multiple sources of finance. According to the respondents, the following policies are suitable for attaining the desirable model: Boosting international interactions and collaborations; networking of information, equipment, capabilities and experiences; giving financial, psychological and spiritual incentives to stockholders and strengthening their connections; preparation of the necessary rules and regulations and statutes as well as empowering of the university organization and the faculty member. According to the respondents, the following principles are important in developing the desirable model: Independence of the university; just access to higher education; spontaneity and indigenous production; reliability of finance method; efficiency and effectiveness. Finally, the findings of the study show that a slow movement has already begun towards diversification and by relying on the proposed model its pace can be accelerated and any diversion can be prevented.

University plays an important role in shaping the future of international community in the field of sustainable development. This objective is attainable through production of modern knowledge. This very role of higher education has encouraged the societies to plan visions and missions for this significant institution. The objective of this paper is to study the missions and visions of Iran’ s higher education in 2025 Plan through mixed explorative methods. The research population of the present study consisted of higher-level documents, experts of higher education, faculty members and the PhD students of Isfahan University in 2015-2016 academic year. Content analysis method was used to analyze the higher-level documents and semi-structured interviews and questionnaire were used to collect the data. The findings of the research show that the missions and visions of Iran’ s higher education can be categorized into three categories for the sake of analysis: Teaching, research and services. The prioritization of the missions and visions showed that “ attaining educational justice” has been determined as the first priority by the higher education experts, the university faculty members and the PhD students. Moreover, the findings also show that according to the experts, “ social needs” are the most “ important opportunity” in the field of realization of the missions and visions.