CURRICULUM PLANNING KNOWLEDGE & RESEARCH IN EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES
Year:2007 | Volume:21 | Issue:15|Papers Count:8

The main purpose of this research is to study the structural obstacles in the higher education system in executing its development plans to suggest suitable strategies. To achieve this purpose, the opinions of three groups were studied including the senior managers in government, the figures and experts in the field of planning and management, and administrative managers and employees. The last two groups were selected using judgment-sampling method. The research method was "applied research" in terms of purpose and so it was "content analysis", "survey research", and "correlational research" in terms of data collecting method. In addition to the review of the related literature, the desired data was gathered by analyzing the interview transcription of the senior managers as well as questionnaires. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyze the data and draw conclusions. According the findings, the obstacles to executing the development plans in the higher education system originate from its functional structure. The obstacles include: the lack of conformity between the structure and the particulars of the development plans, between the structure and the environment in which the plans carried out, and between the structure and the plans goals, which all resulted from functional structure of higher education system and its limits. Finally three strategies are proposed to overcome the structural obstacles to executing the development plans in the higher education sector. In order of importance, these strategies include participative culture, systematic or synthetic management, and matrix structure. On the basis of regression model, the proposed strategies have correlation with each other and play an effective role in removing the obstacles.

This research administered with the aim of investigate the roles of participation to decision making, organization citizenship behavior, pay satisfaction, tend to stay, turnover, job alternatives, trust to organization, job involvement and work involvement on perceived organizational justice (in distributive, procedural and relational dimensions) among teachers of special schools in Esfahan city. On the basis of this aim, from total of teachers, who work in special schools in Esfahan city, 231 persons (include 52 males and 179 females) selected with using cluster random sampling. Questionnaire which used in research were the three questionnaires for organizational justice assessment and the nine questionnaires for nine predictive variables assessments. Data analyzed with the use of stepwise regression analysis. results showed that, for distributive justice, pay satisfaction, turnover, Participation to decision making, work involvement and tend to stay respectively, for procedural justice, participation to decision making, trust to organization, job involvement and pay satisfaction respectively, and finally for relational justice, Participation to decision making, turnover and trust to organization respectively have significant (P<0.05 or P< 0.01) predictive power.

The purpose of this study was to examine administrators' performance & attitude at Azad Islamic university branches of 8th district according to dimensions & components of change management & to develop an appropriate conceptual framework: to achieve the above goals, first the research literature was reviewed deeply and 138 components of change management in higher education were extracted, which reduced to 5 components by expert judgment. The extracted components categorized in 5 dimensions: competencies of change leader traits, the culture of change, policies and strategies of change, change environment, change content. Then a 108 items questionnaire was developed. The questionnaire was administered among a randomly selected sample consisted of 267 presidents, vice-presidents, deans, associate deans & head departments after establishing its validity (by expert judgment) and its reliability (by calculation of Cronbach's Alpha coefficient=98.0). The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics methods as well as inferential tests such as ANOVA, Chi square, factor analysis, and path analysis. The finding showed that there was no significant difference between three groups of administrator's performance. The same result was found about their attitudes. To present the conceptual framework, the extracted factors were analyzed by factors Analysis through SPSS and were named by Expert Judgment (ten specialists). Then the final conceptual framework was drawn by path Analysis through LISEREL & GFI test confirmed the conceptual framework factors and their interaction and correlation by calculation GFI (GFI=0.97).

The present study aims to investigate Khorasgan Islamic Azad University students' outlook about the extent to which their professors enlist such teaching effectiveness criteria (as lesson planning, implementation of teaching, classroom management, human relations, assessment, and optimal personality traits). To achive such end, a descriptive-survey research design was utilized. The target population comprised all senior students studying at this college of psychology and educational sciences, basic sciences, and agriculture. From the population, a sample of 165 students were randomly selected using the proportional stratified sampling method. A researcher-developed questionnaire with 41 five-option multiple choice questions fitted into the Likert scale was then employed for collecting the related data. The reliability of the questionaire was 0.89 which was calculated by Chronbach's alpha coefficient formula. While descriptive statistics was used to measure such as frequency, percentage, mean, and standard of deviation values, inferential statistical techniques such as dependent t-test, independent t-test, one-variable t-test, ANOVA, t-hoteling and Tukey test were employed for analyzing and interpreting data. The findings revealed that the mean values obtained on the six variables under investigation for the professors teaching at the related colleges were 3.66, 3.13, 3.56, 3.3, 3.24 and 3.43 respectively. As can be seen, only the mean value related to the classroom management variable is way above the specified average value. Overall, it was concluded that the teaching effectiveness of all professors in question has been average and that the professors' performance with all research questions has been meaningful for the three target colleges involved in the study.

The aim of the present study was to find ways to make high school boy and girl students familiar with their citizenships rights. Among the possible and related ways, five factors: educating students in: eccomomics finane, culture, social and political affairs were selectod to evaluate and achieve the purposes of this study. The population comprised (1980 students) all of whom were and gril students of whom 290 students of both genders were vandomly selected to take part in this study. The instrument used in this research was a researcher-made question naire with 29 items based on the Likert scale with a reliability indea of %86. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the deta. The results showed that all the factors were effective in making students familiar with their citizenship rights.

The present study investigated the status of primary education curricula in the system of higher education from the educational experts, perspective. It also proposed applicable ways to improve curricula status. In this study, five hypotheses concerned with primary education status, purposes, content, teaching methodology and evaluation. This research conducted through Survey research design. Research population comprised 500 instructors teach in Islamic azad University. Sample population (n= 100) were selected through cluster random sampling. They filled an 83-item researcher-made questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted through descriptive (frequency, percentage, mean and SD) and inferential (Z scores) statistics through SPSS.11. The results of the study showed that the present primary curricula should be radically revised due to curricula problems concerning specific educational purposes.

The purpose of this research was to find the causes of academic achievement in girls versus boys. The research design was EX-Post Facto method. The statistic community of the research includes all students of guidance and secondary schools of three provinces (Southern, Northern and Razavi Khorasan) consisting of totally 753464 students (385612 males and 367852 females). The sample volume determined 858 students (432 males and 421 females) according to Krejcie and Morgan Formula, chosen by cluster sampling. Three questionnaires were used to gather data: The Cooper Smith standard questionnaire and two researcher-made questionnaires on attitude towards education, and academic achievement motive. Reliability of these questionnaires were 0.87, 0.92 and 0.86 respectively. The data were analyzed using T-test and correlation coefficient. Findings showed that academic achievement motive in girls was more than boys, and their attitude towards education was more positive than boys. But there was no significant difference in self-confidence between the boys and girls. The high school students were better in these variables than the guidance school students. Also, results showed that there was positive correlation among these factors