UNIVERSITY TEXTBOOKS, RESEARCH AND WRITING
Year:2019 | Volume:22 | Issue:43 |Papers Count:7

Although political thinking is one of the earliest forms of man's written thinking, and most of the classical philosophical texts were basically political, exploring the techniques of political philosophization and elaborating criteria for determining what is political and what is not political dates only to the mid-decades of the 20th century. In the mid-decades of the 20th century, the researchers of political philosophy explained and presented patterns for understanding political ideas, and Thomas Spragens’ Understanding Political Theory is one of the most valuable works in this field. Spragens in this work-that is very popular and comprehensible among political sciences experts and the relevant M. A. and PhD students, and is used as a textbook for Methodology or Policy Theories in M. A. level – by presenting a 4-level model that includes 1) observing crisis and disorder, 2) diagnosis of the problem and cause of the crisis, 3) imaginative reconstruction of the polis; and finally 4) prescribing a solution to the problem. In Spragens’ view, each political philosopher in his explorations is inevitably engaged in these levels, and so, applying this model will help the students of political sciences to practically learn how to politically think. Reviewing the current issues on the nature of political thought, the present study attempts to criticize Spragens’ articulation of the subject in order to simultaneously explore its points of strength and weakness.

In this research, the validity and compatibility of readability formulas in the evaluation of Persian texts were investigated. The main question was whether the results of evaluating Persian texts with readability formulas are valid. The research included three genres: textbooks, stories, and newspapers; and for each genre, three different texts were considered. For each text, three samples with at least one hundred words were selected by systematic random sampling. The samples were evaluated using Flesch-Kincaid, FOG and Fry readability formulas. The results of the research showed that the output of the formulas is stable in the textbook and newspaper genres, but it is instable in story texts that can be attributed to the variable language style of stories. In general, the results of this research and the reinterpretation of the results of the earlier studies showed that the output of readability formulas is not compatible with the structure of Persian language, and text evaluation of various genres suggests that applying readability formulas leads to evaluate Persian texts as "very difficult" or "invalid". It seems that in order to adapt these formulas, it is necessary to change the coefficients or add different indices that are compatible to the structural features of Persian language.

In this paper, the course of fiction, as a subset of optional courses in the second stage of literary techniques of Persian language and literature B. A. Program (approved on 2012/6/24 by the Council of Planning for Higher Education), has been critically examined in two related areas. First, the course of the fiction, including the target, headings and resources is examined in detail; and secondly, in a macro perspective, the position of this course is analyzed in the overall structure of the program. In the lesson explanations, there is a fundamental methodological objection in the target section. In this section, an introduction to drama comes along with other forms and types of fiction, while drama itself is an independent literary genre, and it is by no means a subset of fictional literature. In the headings section, there are numerous writing mistakes, and the literary genre of drama is misclassified under the title of fiction; the diversity and multiplicity of the ten headings have led the scope of work to exceed the boundaries of a two-unit course. In the section of main references, the outdated and incomplete references to the resources are the main weaknesses, and in the section of research resources, given the general title of the course, references are not accurate and, moreover, they are not updated. In the macro perspective, a fundamental assumption has been neglected in the B. A. program of Persian Language and Literature, and that is, all the classical and contemporary Persian literary texts (including poetry and prose) should be taught, revised, and readout based on new literary theories, when they are included in academic studies. With this assumption, and regarding to the global classifications, while paying particular attention to modern literary theories, the structure of this program should be divided into three main sections: poetry, fiction and drama. In this case, fiction literature will become one of the main parts of the triple parts of the B. A. program instead of being in an optional position.the undergraduate program of Persian language and literature,modern literary theories,fiction literature,poetry,drama

The present study was conducted with the aim of procedural, thematic and methodological analysis of research papers published in the Biannual Journal of University Textbooks; Research and Writing, from 1996 to 2017. This is a descriptive applied research that has been carried out through content analysis method. The statistical population includes all the 297 articles of the relevant issues. The data collection tool was a content analysis checklist verified by experts. The method of data analysis was based on counting, percentage, coding and interpretation analysis. The results show that a total of 41 issues and 297 articles have been published. The highest and lowest number of papers are respectively related to the years 2003-2004 (10. 774%) and 2007 (2. 020%). The participation of men was 67. 933% and women's participation was 32. 066%. The percentage of single-authored articles was 72. 053%, and the percentage of multi-authored papers was 27. 947%. Regarding the researchers, 56. 294% of them were affiliated with the state universities; and in their rank analysis, assistant professors (47. 268%), and experts (1. 187%) had respectively the most and the least contributions. The results of the thematic analysis indicated that political science and criticism were respectively the lowest and the highest fields of study in these papers. The findings of the methodological analysis showed that qualitative research method (86. 164%) and mixed research method (4. 713%) were respectively the highest and the lowest research methods adopted by the relevant researchers. Based on the findings of the research, it can be said that a promotion in women's participation, tendency to multi-authored works, tendency to analysis and critique, and participation of high-ranking academic professors and state universities; as well as a shift of methodology from quantitative approach towards qualitative and mixed approaches are the most important features of the researches published in the Biannual Journal of University Textbooks; Research and Writing.

The importance of book as an inseparable ingredient of education is not overlooked. However, a book will be useful and effective when it meets acceptable criteria. This inquiry aimed at redefining and representing the criteria for a comprehensive university textbook offered for English major, as well as evaluating a set of specialized English university textbook published by prestigious Iranian and international publishers on the basis of the presented criteria. To do so, one title from each certain domestic and international publishers was chosen; the domestic publishers were SAMT, Payame Noor University, Khate sefid, Rahnama, and Zabankhadeh; and the international publishers were Oxford University Press, Cambridge, Routledge, Blackwell, and Longman. Relying on content analysis, 20 research experts judged the selected books. The validity and reliability of the research instrument were reported at an acceptable level (Creswell, 2007). The assessments revealed that generally the books by international publishers, compared to the books by domestic publishers, were more compatible with the criteria presented in this research. Although domestic books were in tandem with the framework of an acceptable university textbook, there were inadequacies in them that were presented at the end of this paper. The findings demand domestic publishers to pay more attention to improve qualitative level and content quality of specialized books for English major.

This article aimed to review critically the book Theoretical and Practical Approaches to Curriculum Development in Higher Education. The research was carried out through critical philosophical exploration method. The book, that is the case of this study, was written by Nasr, Etemadizadeh (Darikvandi), and Nili, and was published in 2011 by the cooperation of SAMT organization and University of Isfahan. The tool for reviewing this book was a checklist for university textbooks provided by The Iranian Council for Reviewing Books and Texts on Human Sciences. The data analysis was taken place by qualitative content analysis. According to the findings, the strong points of the book are its fluent and expressive writing, the congruence of its content with religious and Islamic principles, and using scientific tools. The weak points of the work were its inappropriate cover design, several editing mistakes, lack of total coherence and logical order, lack of coherence and logical order in chapters, using outdated sources, inappropriate citation, uncertain and ambiguous references, carelessness in the scientific analysis of problems, lacking innovation, using obsolete content, carelessness to the theoretical bases of curriculum studies, inappropriate conformity and comprehensiveness, and inappropriate equivalents for translated words. Overall, regarding the strong and weak points of the book, it is not well organized and requires a major revision.

Considering the importance of Arabic language in Iran and in its integration with Persian literature, learning Arabic for better understanding of Persian literature, is necessary. Accordingly various textbooks are yearly written and published for teaching Arabic language to the Persian language and literature students. The point is that “ How much is the content of these books understandable for readers? ” Therefore, in order to determine the readability level of these textbooks, their content should be analyzed. A technique that is used for the analysis and evaluation of readability level of materials is Cloze Readability Index (CRI). The present study investigated the readability level of Arabic Grammar and Passages (1) textbook by using Cloze reading technique. The research method is content analysis based on CRI and the research instrument is a multiple-choice research-made test that was answered by 36 students of Persian language and literature at Shiraz University. Results indicated that the obtained mean of the test is 41/17%, which implies the difficulty of the content. It shows that the book content is at stress and mental pressure level and does not fit to learner’ s level.