CURRICULUM PLANNING KNOWLEDGE & RESEARCH IN EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES
Year:2010 | Volume:7 | Issue:25|Papers Count:12

The Present study examined the relationship between the thinking styles employed and the educational achievement among the students of engineering, psychology and education. Through convenient sampling, 146 students of engineering and through random sampling, 142 students of psychology and education were selected to respond to Sternberg and Wagner's Thinking Styles Inventory as well as to a self-report questionnaire on educational achievement. The validity of the instruments questionnaire was established according to the experts' opinion and its reliability was estimated by using Cronbach's Alpha coefficient (a= 0.75). The research findings showed that in terms of executive thinking the students of psychology and education performed better while the students of engineering were better in legislative thinking. Moreover, no significant difference was found between the two groups of participants in judicial thinking. On the other hand, the executive thinking among students of engineering and legislative thinking among students of psychology and education showed the strongest power of predicting the educational achievement.A statistically significant difference was also found among male and female students in terms of executive thinking where female students were in higher levels and judicial thinking where male students were in higher levels. Finally, in terms of legislative thinking male students of psychology and education were better than female ones.

This descriptive survey study investigated the cognitive and metacognitive strategies in learners' achievement motivation in educational systems which are based on the communication and information technology. Out of 70 experts in curriculum, educational technology and e-learning in different Tehran universities, a sample of 58 experts were selected to participate in the study. The instrument used for data collection was a researcher-made questionnaire (a=0.86) with 46 items. The research findings showed that among the cognitive strategies, elaboration had the most significant role while the role of rehearsal and organization were found to be significant as well. Among the metacognitive strategies, control, found to have the most significant role while planning and regulation strategies were found to be significant. However, no significant difference were found between these two types of strategies.

The present study investigated how the elementray school teachers experienced the Descriptive Assessment Program through a phenomenological qualitative research design. The participants, selected by the purposive sampling, were 23 teachers who were executing the program in different districts of Isfahan during the academic year 1387-88 (2008-2009). The data were collected by employing an in-depth semi-structure interview and were analyzed by the Colaizzi method. The findings were classified into 3 major domains including learning, psychological health and personality of the students. It was concluded mental that the positive and negative experiences of the participants of the program had a significant influence of their understanding of the program. Recognizing these understandings can help the designers of this program improve it.

This research aimed at investigating the effect of teaching by the Technology Enabled Active Learning (TEAL) method on the academic achievement of high school students in physics by a quasi-experimental method. The research Population were the first grade female students of Falavarjan high schools. The study was conducted by using two groups randomly-selected of high school students (each group with 28 students). The experiment group was taught by the TEAL method and the control group was taught by the traditional method. The academic achievement of the subjects were assessed by the teacher-made pre-test and post-test. The validity was confirmed by the experts and its reliability was established by cronbach's Alpha (a=0.86) coefficient (86%). The data was analyzed through inferential statistics (ANCOVA). The results showed that the academic achievement by the TEAL method have been higher than those using the traditional method of learning at the probability level of 0/001.

The purpose of this study was to study the efficacy of coping therapy on decreasing the level of test anxiety and improving academic achievement of female high school students of Sagez. Iran to achieve this aim, 160 students, grade 3, were randomly selected from Sagez high schools. First, the Spielberger test anxiety scale was administered to the subjects. The results of the questionnaires relating to test anxiety and the interview showed that 41 subjects had highly test anxiety. Then, 40 students were assigned to two experimental and control groups. The experimental group (20 students) then participated in coping therapy for ten 90-minute sessions. Finally, the Speliberger test anxiety scale was administrated the two groups again. The results of this study demonstrated that the prevalence of test anxiety among high school female students of Sagez was 25/62. The results indicated significant differences between the pretest and posttest scares. In other words, there were significant differences among the control vs experimental group as for the decrease in the level of anxiety. Further analysis through the t-test results indicated significant differences between experimental and control groups as for the academic achievement.

The present study investigated the effect of the teaching methods (problem solving, project, lecture) on the promotion of the quality of the in-service training programs for the high school chemistry teachers in Isfahan through a quasi-expremental design. Through simple random sampling, out of 522 teachers participating in the in-service training program in summer 1387 (2008), 120 teachers were selected to sit for a pre-test as well as a post-test and to respond to an attitude questionaire. The research findings showed that there is statistically significant difference among the teaching methods. It was found that the problem-solving and project methods were more effective than lectures. Moreover, considering the demographic variables, no sionificant differences were found in terms of gender and years of service while the difference was found significant in terms of university degree at the probability level of 0.05. Finally, the findings revealed that the short-term in-service training programs for chemistry high school teachers are effective in terms of the quality factors.

This research aimed at studying the relationship between family socioeconomic, achievement goals, learning strategy and students, mathematical problem solving ability. For this purpose, a survey research method was used and the data collected on deep strategies, surface strategies, mastery goals, performance- approach goals, performance-avoidance goals and family socioeconomic status by using the Goal Achievement Questionnaire proposed by Elliot and Church and Study Process Questionnaire by Biggs. A sample of 427 students were selected through random cluster sampling. The results showed that the relation ship mastery goals and learning deep strategy and mathematical problem solving ability was positive and significant but the relation ship between performance-approach goals and performance-avoidance goals with mathematical problem solving ability was not significant. The relationship between deep strategy and mathematical problem solving ability was positive and significant and the relationship between surface strategy and mathematic problem solving ability was negative but not significant. The results also showed that mastery goals are the most important factor affecting the mathematical problem solving ability and boys used performance-approach goals more than girls and the students belonging to low socioeconomic status used mastery goals more than of high socioeconomic status. Yet, there is no difference between those students, learning strategy and mathematical problem solving ability in terms of gender and family socioeconomic status.

The aim of this research was to examine the relationship between job design and performance of teachers of public high schools in Tehran, districts 1-5. The research method was correlational descriptive. The population of this study was all the teachers of public high schools in Tehran. Sampling method was random chuster sampling & the data was collected using 2 Questionnaires: a job Design questionnaire and performance one. The reliability of the first questionnaire was 0.85 and that of the 0.86 second was the analysis of the data was done with inferential measures such as Pearson correlation, regression. The research results showed that there was a positive relationship between skill variety, independent, feedback indicators and performance of the Participants. Also, the findings of this research showed that there was no relationship between indicators of task identity and as well as task significance and performance.