JOURNAL OF CURRICULUM STUDIES (J.C.S.)
Year:2017 | Volume:11 | Issue:43 |Papers Count:6

Despite the growing progress of human knowledge about the neuro-cultural bases of human learning and development, its potential applications and implications for curriculum theory and practice have not been adequately investigated. In this regard, after providing a review on the research findings in the field of cultural neuroscience of learning and development, the insights and messages of these findings for school curriculum are examined through an integrated review method. The recent studies suggest that the brain continually adapts itself to the cultural environment and changes its structure and function depending on experience. According to these studies, neural and behavioral variations among cultures are due to unique interaction of genetic factors and physiological and cultural factors. The recent findings in the field of brain and culture also suggest that cultural experience play a significant role in the formation and development of brain mechanisms underlying cognition. Emotional development is also dramatically affected by the quality of the cultural context. These documents support an innitative approach to curriculum which has known as Cultuarlly Responsive curriculum. According to this approach, respecting different worldviews of teachers and students from different cultural contexts should be the focus of the school curriculum. Educational planners and policy makers must not only accept the existence of multiple cultures, but also respect the cultural diversity and provide opportunities for all individuals within different cultures to take part in the improvement of their own and others cultural understand.

This study aims to conduct a comparative analysis on English language teaching textbooks in educational institutions mainly distributed by the American and European publishers. One of the concepts that can be analyzed is cultural hegemony in which a discourse seeks to exclude and remove other discourses. Accordingly, first the sub-components of cultural hegemony through the library search were extracted for the analysis phase. Next, the content of English language teaching textbooks was analyzed with regard to the extracted sub-components. The results indicated that some of the English learning textbooks commonly taught in the language institutes, such as American English File series, include elements of hegemony more than other textbooks.Although other textbooks included less elements of hegemony, they had a hegemonic content.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of cultural components and to recognize cultural conflicts in the content of elementary school Farsi textbooks. The present study is conducted though quantitative content analysis and the corpus include the reading Farsi textbooks in the academic year 2015-2016. The categories in the deductive analysis are derived from the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution including Public Religious and Moral Values, Legal Norms, Religious Norms, National Symbols and Religious Symbols. The findings reveal that only.26 of the Farsi textbooks content in elementary schools had cultural content. In addition, the cultural content presented in 84 cases is in conflict with prescribed cultural indexes of Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. In order to determine the validity of the data, a second coder is asked to code more than 50% of the data. The degree of the agreement between two coders is. 90. According to the findings, improvement of the content regarding Public Religious and Moral Values, Legal Norms and also National Symbols is recommended.

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the status of educational equity in intended, implemented and achieved curriculum of social studies in primary school in the academic year of 2015-2016, based on McCowan model. On the basis of current research in which social issues such as multiculturalism, gender and socioeconomic status have been highlighted, four volumes of Social Studies textbooks are used as the "intended curriculum". In addition, 12 teachers of primary school teaching grades 3 to 6 are selected to check "implemented curriculum" and 12 parents of primary school students from 3 to 6 (three parents from each grade) aree selected to check the "achieved curriculum". The participants are selected through purposive and snowball sampling. In the intended curriculum, in terms of gender component, mother's role for girls and economic role for boys are emphasized. Moreover, there is no emphasis on cultural diversity and, in the socio-economic component, the emphasis is on urbanization and middle class. Also, in the Implemented curriculum, for gender component the emphasis is on the role of motherhood for girls and economic role for boys. In terms of cultural diversity, teachers, do not consider themselves as promoters of cultural diversity. And they emphasize urban middle class in socioeconomic component. In addition, in the achieved curriculum, both girls and boys maintain similar views about job, achieving and high social statues.Also, both groups exhibited intolerance toward cultural differences in their attitude and behaviors and emphasis higher socioeconomic circumstances.

This research is an anthropological study that investigates the quality of social relationships between students, teachers and parents of Iranian and non-Iranian students in a girls' elementary school, where almost one fourth of students are Afghans. The method used in this research is a qualitative ethnographic method that involves observation techniques, observation with participation, interview, and dialogue. Research shows that failure to pursue multicultural education strategies, in educational settings with cultural diversity, would lead to lack of mutual understanding, cultural intolerance, and ultimately the alignment of students with public culture.

Cultural patterns could be expressed explicitly in the language and language teaching. Today the educational content of English textbooks has become a cultural tool which conveys the cultural content. This article examines the cultural content of ninth grade English textbook from the viewpoint of Iranian-Islamic culture, target culture and international culture. This analysis is conducted based on Brown (2012), Lee (2009), and cultural subcategories of Davari Ardakani’s proposal (2007). The research method is text based, non-experimental and descriptive, which is done based on content analysis. The corpus included ninth grade English textbook (prospect 3) with relevant workbook, published in 2015 (first edition). The units of analysis include vocabulary, visual and image themes and texts. The findings revealed categories of words, images and text including 427 cultural cases: 315 cases of which equivalent to 73.77% include culture and Iranian-Islamic ulture and identity.