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Curriculum development has always been dealt as one of the most important areas of language learning and teaching by educational institutions. Null curriculum has been viewed as one of the significant kinds of curriculum types which is important due to its absence, being left out or overlooked but should not be disregarded. For this reason, a 48-item questionnaire for null curriculum in ELT with a special focus on twenty-first century skills was developed and validated by the application of the Rasch model. The Rasch model was employed to decide whether the scores of an instrument are purposive, meaningful and significant. Rasch analysis using Winsteps software version 3.73 was used to determine the dimensionality, use of response category, sample appropriateness and reliability of the scale. The test was administered to 80 university instructors teaching at BA level in different universities in Iran. The results revealed that the Rasch model fits the test after deleting six items from the ABOUT THE AUTHORS Sara Kazemi is a PhD student in TEFL at the Azad University of Torbat-e-Heydarieh, Iran. She is also teaching English in Azad University of Mashhad, and Tabaran Institute of Higher Education. Her prominent fields of research are curriculum development, teacher education and development, and e-learning.Mitra Zeraatpisheh is an assistant professor at the Islamic Azad University (IAU) of Mashhad. Her research interest include SLA, Linguistics, teaching methodologies and teaching skills.

The number of children with autism is increasing worldwide. These children like all other children should be provided with equal chances for learning and education. Thus, English language education is not an exception as the need to learn it in today's world is inevitable. The present study sought to investigate the effect of employing Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) on English as a foreign language vocabulary learning relying on its effectiveness in first language communication. As a single-subject study an experimental A-B design was employed through repeated measurement. The participants were two highfunctioning children with autism aged 9 and 12 at a school for students with special needs. The treatment phase included 15 sessions. An analysis of visual inspection and graphic representation revealed performance improvement in both cases after the intervention. Moreover, some problems while educating the two participants for English vocabulary including lack of cooperation in phase 2, lack of attention and cooperation in mid-intervention, sense problems such as proprioceptive and ABOUT THE AUTHOR ZZ and MZ are assistant professors at the English department of the Islamic Azad University of Mashhad. Their fields of interest for research are mainly concerned with language education. NMS is also an assistant professor and the dean of the Department of Occupational Therapy of the Medical University of Mashhad. He is involved in research on education and the rehabilitation of children with special needs including children with autism. The authors are interested in investigating the effectiveness of different teaching methodologies on learners with and without special needs including children with autism. The number of children with autism is increasing worldwide and they also need to be provided with equal chances for learning as well as education. Hence, language education is not an exception. Accordingly, the present paper includes the description of an experiment conducted on children with autism and their vocabulary learning using Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS).

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As a praxis-based sequence these texts are specifically designed by the team of international scholars to engage in local in-country language pedagogy research. This exciting and innovative series will bring a dynamic contribution to the development of critical new literacies. With a focus on literacy teaching, research methods and critical pedagogy, the founding principle of the series is to investigate the practice of new literacies in English language learning and teaching, as negotiated with relevance to the localized educational context. It is being and working alongside people in the world that is at the core of the PELT viewpoint. The Praxis of English Language Teaching and Learning series will focus on inter-culturality and interdisciplinary qualitative inquiry and the dissemination of "non-colonised" research.