policy assumptions in applied linguistics journals: the case of iranian authors

Research articles in education ideally offer a suite of implications for what the findings might mean to other stakeholders, including researchers working along similar lines, practitioners operating in educational settings, and policymakers making decisions and (over)seeing them translate into action. having taken the last stakeholder as its point of departure, this investigation has aimed at unpacking the image of the policymaker and the conception of policymaking in the articles of four applied linguistics journals (two generalist and two specialized ones) published in the iranian context. in line with this, the articles in the said journals written by domestic researchers between 2021-2023 were chosen as the data of the study to see how they would possibly conceive of or position policymakers vis-à-vis the act of making decisions. qualitative content analysis initially pointed to an underrepresentation in the data of policy-relevant entities and the implications of research to them. it was additionally found that the authors had mostly assumed policies are (to be) implemented in a top-down regulatory fashion in policymaking processes, and that teachers in the main lack agentive action to take initiatives. it is argued that, while such a conception of policy is to some extent natural given the implication-making nature of most research, its uncritical acceptance by the consumers of research might help normalize the powerlessness of practitioners in the face of policy mandates.