CURRICULUM PLANNING KNOWLEDGE & RESEARCH IN EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES
Year:2014 | Volume:11 | Issue:14 (41)|Papers Count:24

The aim of the present study was to investigate the learning styles in technical and vocational students. Descriptive method was selected to conduct the present research. Population of the study was consisted all of technical and vocational students of Mashhad. A random sample of 193 members was selected to respond the VARK learning style questionnaire. Data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics (Pierson correlation, simple regression, mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (MANOVA, ANOVA). The findings showed that there was a significant difference between visual, aural, read/write, kina-esthetic and blended learning styles (p<0.001). Most of the students’ learning style was aural learning style. Most of female students tended to visual learning style and most of male students tended to read/write learning style (p<0.05). The second level students tended to visual learning style and the third level students tended to read/write learning style (p<0.05). There was a significant relationship between academic achievement and visual learning style. Results of simple regression analysis revealed that academic achievement could be determined by visual learning style (p<0.05). According to these findings, nature of technical and professional fields, the rule of aural learning style on this system and curriculum elements need to be changed seriously.

The purpose of the present study was to compare the effect of training the strategies of mental imagery, think-aloud, written representation and motor representation on the performance of the fifth grade male elementary students in solving verbal math problems. For this purpose, using random cluster sampling, two elementary male schools were selected from the third educational district in Isfahan. Each of these elementary schools had two fifth grade classes (n=108). 75 students were randomly divided into five fifteen-member groups consisted of mental imagery group, think-aloud group, written representation group, motor representation group and control group. All the students of five groups were given a pretest consisted of 12 verbal math problems and Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM). No significant difference was observed between the mean scores gained by the students of five groups on the pretest and Raven's intelligence test. Each of the experimental groups received 10 forty five-minute training sessions .The control group received no instruction. After completion of training sessions, all of the students took the verbal math problems posttest, which was parallel with the pretest. The one- way analysis of variance on the differences among the students' scores on the pretest and the posttest showed significant differences of the groups. Tukey follow-up test was used to compare the paired group means. The students of written representation group and mental imagery group showed better performance on the posttest in comparison with the control group. The results indicated that written representation and mental imagery methods have a positive impact on the students’ performance in verbal math problem solving.

This study evaluated the teachers’ professional development program in the field of nanotechnology in Isfahan by descriptive research methodology. The research population was consisted of 4379 teachers of Isfahan. By using random sampling method, proportional to size (based on the six districts of Isfahan) and by using Cochran formula, 354 teachers were chosen. In order to collect data, the teacher professional development questionnaires in the field of nanotechnology were distributed with four dimensions. The validity of the questionnaires was obtained as 0.82through Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. After collecting data in the first step, questions of the four fields of professional development related to the purpose, content, methods and evaluation were identified. In the second step, questions of the questionnaires were developed and implemented. The obtained data from questionnaires was extracted and analyzed by using Uni-variate t-test, Friedman test and multi-way ANOVA and SPSS software version 19. The obtained results from statistical analysis were as follow: all options related to the purpose, content, methods and evaluations were higher than average (hypothetical mean of 3). Features of curriculum for teacher professional development in the field of nanotechnology in terms of educational level showed significant differences. However, in terms of the field of study variable, no significant difference was observed in respondents' comments.

The purpose of the study was the feasibility of curriculum accomplishment with spiritual approach in secondary school. The population of study was included 1813 female secondary school teachers (theoretical branch) of Mazandaran province. Sample size was selected as 317 subjects based on Morgan stratified proportional sampling method. A researcher–made questionnaire has been applied in order to collect data. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient estimated as 75% to measure questionnaire validity. Data analysis and both multiple–variable analysis of variance test (MANOVA), and Pearson correlation test in descriptive statistics (frequency, weight percentage and mean) and inferential statistics have been utilized, respectively. The study data in descriptive section indicated that the studied group possessed too much knowledge and skill as well as desirable attitude on spiritual curriculum accomplishment. However, schools provided moderate facilities to develop the program. In inferential section, the data of multiple- variable analysis of variance (MANOVA) test indicated that there was a significant difference between teacher’s knowledge, attitude, skill scores and school facilities in various cities. The data of Pearson test also showed that there was a positive correlation between curriculum components of knowledge, attitude, skill at different levels and school facilities.

Aesthetic is branch of philosophy discussing about the perception issues including beauty, such as aesthetic experience. John Dewey, a pragmatic philosopher, shared the twentieth century with the possibility of an empirically grounded ethics. There is much to learn from Dewey about how to proceed in an aesthetic experience in quire about morality. Therefore, it is important to explore the relation between Dewey's ethics and his aesthetic experience. This essay with analytical method was an effort to explore this relation. The result showed that aesthetic experience responded to the demand of feeling in difference situations. Therefore, artistic factors of this experience such as feeling, imagination and compassion are the essential components of morality to complete the experience, understanding, and meaning of morality in the people. Moreover, aesthetic experience and moral education are inseparable.

The aim of this research was to investigate about the effect of conceptual map, cooperative learning and traditional methods on the achievement of motivation and academic achievement in biology course. The statistical population included all of the male students in experimental field of Varamin suburbs. In a queasy-experimental study, 60 students were selected by multi-step cluster sampling method and randomly assigned into three groups. The experimental groups separately had 15 sessions of education by conceptual map and cooperative learning methods and the control group was educated by traditional method. All of the groups completed the Hermans’s achievement motivation questionnaire (1970) and the teacher-made test as the pre-test and post-test. The data was analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The findings showed that conceptual map method unlike traditional method led to increase achievement of motivation and academic achievement. Also, cooperative learning method unlike traditional method led to increase academic achievement, but between them in achieving motivation, there were no significant differences. In addition, conceptual map method comparing with cooperative learning method led to increase academic achievement, but there were no significant differences between them in achieving motivation (p<0.05). Therefore, conceptual map method was more effective than cooperative learning and traditional methods.

Teaching-learning process is different in every culture to the perceptions and interpretations of the main actors. This article was performed to identify and analyze the culture of creative teaching in the faculty of Nursing and Midwifery of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. The qualitative research, purposeful sampling and saturation logic based on the theoretical perspectives of 16 faculty members were identified. Data was collected by non-structured interviews and was analyzed through coding techniques. The results were classified into five categories: student characteristics, the power distance of the teacher and student, student-teacher dependency, conserving attitude to science, emphasis on research and lack of teachers’ educational training. The results showed that teachers had different ideas about the characteristics of students and there was a clear boundary between the student and the professor stress. In addition, the findings showed that students tended directly to learn lessons from a teacher. On the other hands, students were not able to discuss and challenge in the classroom and lack of emphasis on research and education as well as other factors on creative teaching process.

The present research was an attempt to investigate the role of socio-economic status of family, reading activities at home and student related variables (self-concept and students’ attitudes toward reading) in reading literacy performance based on PIRLS studies (2006). PIRLS has been applied a three-stage stratified cluster design sampling method. After filtering the data, the research samples included 5411 students studying at the fourth grade of elementary school have participated in PIRS test. The used tools in PIRLS 2006 were reading literacy questions and a questionnaire. The used scales in this study were taken from reading background questionnaire for socio-economic status and reading activities at home, students’ questionnaire for self-concept, students’ attitudes toward reading and reading literacy. Total scores were based on Rasch model which was used structural equation modeling aimed to study direct effects, indirect effects and total effects of socio-economic status variable (exogenous variable) on reading activities at home, self-concept and students’ attitudes towards reading (endogenous variable). After confirming the latent variables, measurement models and fitting the structural complex model, the results showed that the surveyed model has got the required goodness of fit with the data. All effects of socio-economic status on the other endogenous variables were statistically significant. In conclusion, the results suggested that socio-economic status has a significant role in determining and predicting reading progress. Besides, due to the remarkable amount of the obtained variance from endogenous variables, the finding of this study can be applied to educational programs by researchers and all those involved in education.

The quality and content of all educational systems are highly the results of exact planning and proper application of educational styles and tools with a significant role in the promotion of educational purposes. It will be effective on student's performance in the case of applying by families and instructors. The main research purpose was a survey on the role of educational styles of families on student's performance. The statistical population of this study consisted of all male and female students of the 8th zone of the educational department of high school in Tehran in the academic year of 2012-13. 192 girls and 236 boys were selected by random sampling method. The performance criterion was based on their average scores from last year or last term. The research method was Pierson correlation. A researcher–made questionnaire was used to collect data with 40 questions. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used on 50 subjects who were selected randomly. The validity coefficient was 0.871. The results showed that educational styles could predict educational achievement. There was a significant relationship between educational styles and performance (p<0.05). Therefore, those families that used modern educational styles were more successful than those with traditional ones. There was a significant difference between the averages of girls and boys. The boys were taught more with modern educational styles than the girls.

The present study was conducted with the aim of reviewing correlation relationships and explanatory contribution of components of hidden curriculum with the dimensions of research comprehensive approach of educational sciences students of Tehran public universities in the academic year of 2011-2012. Accordingly, 234 male and female undergraduate students studying in educational sciences were selected from six public universities in Tehran (Allame Tabatabaie, Shahid Beheshti, Khaarazmi Tarbiat Moallem, Shahed and Al-Zahra). Research method was descriptive correlation. Scale of assessing hidden academic curriculum and a researcher-made questionnaire of dimension of student comprehensive research attitude were used to collect data. According to the calculated correlation coefficients, there was a direct and significant relationship between positive aspects of the total hidden curriculum and cognitive, emotional and functional dimensions as well as the total of comprehensive research attitude. Meanwhile, there was an inverse significant relationship between negative dimensions of the total hidden curriculum and cognitive, emotional and functional dimensions and also the total comprehensive research attitude. Study of the obtained results from data analyses was associated with determining relative contribution of each hidden curriculum in predicting comprehensive research attitude among educational sciences students". It indicated a total of 28.4% variances of comprehensive research attitude among educational sciences students in its particular way consisting of significant negative relationship (inverse) and positive relationship (consistent).

This research was carried out with the purpose of investigating the relationship between thinking styles and learning strategies with student’s academic performance of Azad University. Research method was descriptive-correlation and three questionnaires (Sternberg-Wagner Thinking Styles, Learning Strategies ASSIST & Dortaj Academic Performance) were completed by 350 students (220 males and 130 females) that were selected with stratified sampling method. Data was analyzed by using Pearson correlation, multiple regression logs model (ENTER) and t-test. The obtained results showed that there was positive and significant correlation between thinking styles and deep & strategic learning strategies with academic performance. However, there was no significant relationship between learning strategy and academic performance. In predicting student’s performance, three level of thinking styles and one level of learning styles were involved. Both genders showed a significant difference in legal, conservative, hierarchical, anarchy & internal thinking styles.

The Proposed of this Study was the quality assessment of educational science department curriculum of Kashan University. It was a descriptive-survey study. Statistical population was including the faculty members and students of educational sciences department. Data gathering tool was a researcher-made questionnaire. Questionnaire reliability was calculated by using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient as 0.934 for the students and 0.878 for the faculty members, respectively. The findings showed that the overall quality of undergraduate science curriculum training from the perspective of faculty members and students was at a relative favorable level. Based on the obtained data, assessment of criteria objectives, content, status of research activities, materials and equipment, the status of research groups and teaching space of faculty members and students were relatively good. Faculty members considered the situation favorable but they believed that the level of students was undesirable. Faculty members teaching methods and evaluation of the situation were ideally believed but the students were relatively good.