JOURNAL OF CURRICULUM STUDIES (J.C.S.)
Year:2008 | Volume:3 | Issue:9|Papers Count:11

This study is going to examine the relationship between the development of derivative words and their affixes in bilingual students at primary level and the typology of their first and second languages. It is expected that Turkish speaking students who learn Farsi as a second language at school, learn and use derived words more than Arabic speaking pupils who learn Farsi as a second language. For this study, the core vocabulary of three rural districts of Kashan (monolingual Farsi speakers), Bonab (Turkish and Farsi bilinguals) and Soosangerd (Arabic and Farsi bilinguals) were studied. The results show no meaningful relationship between the development of derived words and their affixes among participants. This finding could have important implications for curriculum developers and textbook authors.

Any programming should be based on valid data and core vocabulary is an essential data for curricula programmers and developers. Considering this fact OERP launched a national project for identification of "Iranian Primary School Students Core Vocabulary". In this project appropriate methods for estimating basic vocabulary were identified. Then through a massive field study, real, first hand data have been collected from 175 schools. These schools were sampled from rural and urban regions using systemic stratified cluster PPS sampling method. This sample included 46 girl schools, 64 mixed schools and 65 boy schools i.e. 20,000 students and 1,885 teachers in 875 classrooms in all provinces of Iran Several research tools were developed (check lists and questionnaires containing 1641 concrete nouns, 2700 verbs and adjectives in many semantic fields) for the purpose of this research and tests were conducted throughout the country in a tight time schedule. Many people were involved in this project such as 20 full time researchers (12 in phase one, 8 in phase 2), 40 test conductors 12 research staff, 4 teacher consultants, 10 part time staff, 1 accountant. In this paper the management of the project and some of its findings are reported.

This article is going to describe orientations, approaches and methods of Farsi teaching in Elementary school in three different domains (philosophy, psychology and linguistics) of curriculum.In this paper three questions are answered:1. Which orientations, approaches and methods are involved in philosophical module of curriculum?2. Which orientations, approaches and methods are involved in psychological module of curriculum?3. Which orientations, approaches and methods are involved in linguistic module of curriculum?In philosophical module, four orientations are seen: Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism and existentialism and the approaches are: Fundamentalism, Essentialism, Progressivism, and Deconstructionism. Moreover the methods are lecturing, observation, problem solving, indirect method and free methods. In psychological module, these items can be seen: orientations: behavioralism and Rationalism. Approaches: behaviorism cognitionism and humanism. Methods: induction, stimulus-response, problem solving and team work. Finally in linguistic module the items are as follows: orientations like: structuralism, transformation and communication. Approaches: holistic, analytic, linguistic, language experience, natural, communication approaches. Methods: translation, communication, direct and holistic methods.

This study is aimed at exploring the difficulties of learning Persian among bilingual pupils at first grade level in Turkish and Arabic speaking areas. Language skills such as conceptual-aural, speaking, reading, writing in phonetic morphological (i.e. nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives) and syntax were examined.The findings suggest that the first two months of school- namely Mehr and Aban - witness the most problems in conceptual-aural aspects of language skills for children living in such areas. This problem reduces in the following months. In speaking, nouns are better pronounced. The most difficulty appears to be in conjugating verbs mainly in Arabic speaking areas. In general, the more common and simple terminologies are used more often in their speech. Their sentences are limited and have grammatical errors. In reading and writing problems such as lack of readiness to read and write and other technicalities exist. In areas where language is not the concern, socio-cultural problems regarding the educational programmes on the one hand and community issues on the other hand are apparent. When comparing Arabic and Turkish with the Persian language structure, many differences and similarities are found in which the difference playa major role in the difficulties caused in learning the Persian language for these pupils. In the same way the similarities in pronunciation, vocabulary and the grammar of the mother tongue and Persian make it easier to learn the second language. In such process the pupils go through the same stages as learning their mother tongue. In this study, after examining the difficulties of bilingual pupils in Turkish and Arabic speaking areas, and studying the different accents in Iran, the source of the mother tongue languages with Persian have been observed.

The current study aims at the role of the new Persian literature books at elementary level (reading and writing) on the literacy levels of fourth grade boys in Tehran. The following theories have been taken into consideration: The new Persian literature books help elevate the literacy levels in pupils. The new Persian literature books are effective in improving the pupil's level of understanding of informative texts.The new Persian literature books are effective in improving the pupil's level of understanding in literal texts.The current study is a practical observation which has been applied in a comparative-scientific method. It has been conducted on fourth grade boys in Tehran during the 85-86 academic years. The statistical samples have been chosen purposefully. 24 fourth grade boys from wealthy and working class parts of Tehran (6, 15 and 18) were selected. They were examined according to PIRLS (2001) standard examination. The findings of this examination were processed through the data "T-test" and were studied in the society and then compared with the average from the PIRLS 2001 results. These results confirm the above theories. They also suggest that there is not a great difference between the wealthy pupils' conduct from the working class pupils.

Content analysis means study of concepts, principle, attitudes, beliefs and all details of textbooks. The purpose of this research is to study of readability level of the Farsi text books in the grades of four and five of elementary school according to gunning readability level and ability level of students.The method used in this study is content analysis with the use of gunning formula. The population consists of Farsi books in grades of four and five in elementary school and is selected 100 words from each of three parts of first, middle and last of these books. The analysis methods are means, frequency tables and gunning readability level.The results showed that there are differences in readability level among first and middle parts of four grade book and both are higher than ability level of The gunning level in the first and last parts are 56/ and 52/.Therefore both texts are higher than students' ability in grade four. There are differences among the middle and last parts of Farsi's book in grade five. Readability level in the middle and last parts are 78/ and 106/.Then both are higher than ability level of students in grade five.

One type of null curriculum is the one being affected by the writers> personal feelings, attitudes or a lack of required skills in developing desired curriculum. Given the importance of Farsi in the first grade of elementary school which has a key role for the students to enter new educational system, this study examined the objectives of Farsi textbooks. The methodology of content analysis was used in this study. The results show that 22.29% in 1381 and 9.02% in 1382 of the objectives first grade had no corresponding content.