JOURNAL OF THEORY AND PRACTICE IN CURRICULUM
Year:2019 | Volume:7 | Issue:13 |Papers Count:12

Due to some political and financial considerations, the number of postgraduate students has been growing exponentially in Iran in the last two decades. That is while the number of faculty has not increased proportionally to keep up with the fast growth. Hence, the studentfaculty ratio has widened, turning thesis and dissertations into chaotic scene. Accordingly, this paper aims to uncover how Iranian professors supervise postgraduate research projects in such a complex unprecedented context. The research participants are 45 postgraduate students who were selected purposively by criterion sampling strategy and interviewed by informal and in-depth techniques. Methodologically, the research may be deemed as grounded theory with emergent design (proposed by Charmaz). Thus, the data were analyzed at two levels, namely initial and focused (secondary) coding, and a quadripartite typology emerged consequently. To establish and report credibility, two strategies were continuously applied as member check and peer debriefing. Taking into account four criteria as power relations, level of informativity, level of support, and reciprocal expectations, it is argued that Iranian professors draw upon four research supervision styles: facilitative-networking(when supervisor establishes a community of experts to facilitate the project into a productive experience), laissez-faire (when supervisor does not care about how the work should be run and the student is fully free for his/her options), commander-soldier (when supervisor just dictates what he/she thinks is true and the student must abide by the commands), and exploitative (when the supervisor makes the student to churn out as many publications as possible and spends no time and energy for the improvement and development of student in an academic manner).

The purpose of this study was to determine the employability of university graduates from the viewpoint of experts in higher education, employers and experts in the field of employment and graduate students. The design of this research was a sequential exploratory blended method and the tool used in the qualitative section was in-depth interviews and the constant comparison of the findings with the literature. The statistical population of the first part-qualitative, included professors and experts of higher education, experts in the field of employment and work, graduates and sampling method in this section was purposeful and theoretical, analyzed by content analysis technique. The population of the quantitative phase included professors and faculty members of Shahid Beheshti University and Tehran University who were selected by stratified random sampling. In order to analyze quantitative data, descriptive and inferential statistics, t-student test, factor analysis of variance, and confirmatory factor analysis were used. The content validity of the interviews and the questionnaire, were reviewed based on the views of the curriculum experts and the experts of higher education and were used after confirmation. The validity of the interviews was based on four criteria of Guba and Lincoln (1994) and the reliability of the questionnaire using Cronbach's test Confirmed. In this research, 66 components of employability were identified and reduced to 16 skills by comparing the findings with the literature and finally classified in to three categories of academic knowledge and skills, knowledge and skills related to the work environment, attitudes and individual characteristics. Teamwork was determined as the most significant component of employability.

The purpose of this study was investigating the Personal Practical Knowledge (PPK) of teachers which was fulfilled though through qualitative method. Understanding PPK helps us to understand why teachers act in a specific way. In this regards, reflecting on their personal and professional narratives also help to improve their practice. The samples for this study included 13 teachers teaching in a non-profit primary school in Tehran. The results of the study indicated teachers’ rich knowledge of factors affecting success of the teaching profession. However, the data obtained from the observations revealed the difference between what the teacher describes as a successful teacher and effective teaching, and what happens in their practice. The dynamic and contextual nature of the teacher's knowledge and the different meanings and interpretations of similar experiences and events and absence of reflection are the factors that could lead to such differences.

The aim of this research is to investigate the components of context based on mathematics approach in secondary school curricula. For this pupose content analysis was used as the appraoch. The corpus of this research was the 10th grade mathematics textbook in Iran academic year of 2016-17. The tool in this research was content analysis form with regard to context-based mathematics approach. The data obtained from content analysis forms were quantitatively characterized (frequency tables and percentages) and analyzed. The Shannon entropy analysis method was also used to determine the effects of the four components of the contextbased approach, including being practical, realistic, relevant to the student's daily life experiences and openness in designing the textbooks and the teaching guideline of the 10th grade mathematics textbook of the humanitarian major. Then, these issues were addressed at a deeper level with an emphasis on the four components of qualitative content analysis. The validity of the research tool was approved by five faculty members of major universities in curriculum and mathematical education. William Scott's method was utilized to ensure the reliability of the content analysis form. The findings indicated that the degree of attention and involvement parameters and the coefficient degree of importance for the context-based mathematics approach of each component were very low, and hence the contents of 10th grade mathematics textbook were not adapted to the context-based mathematics approach principles.

The current study aims to evaluate teaching puberty components to girls in the seventh grade of first stage high school textbooks. These components include sexual, physical, emotional, psychological, mental (cognitive), social, religious, and civil puberty. The research method was qualitative content analysis, and the target corpus included the 7th grade of high school textbooks in the academic year of 2015-2016, from which Thinking and Lifestyle (Mutual book for boys and girls, Thinking and Lifestyle Mutual book for boys and girls), Divine Messages, Social Studies and Experimental Science were selected. According to the findings 337 puberty components were found in the selected corpus. The results indicated that religious puberty with 115 components was in the first place and putative puberty with 22 components had the lowest rank.

The present study aims to determe teachers’ professional qualifications in “ the learning approach to knowing” and offer executive strategies for realization of this approach. In this research an exploratory mixed-method research was employed. The population in the qualitative phase of the research consisted of experts of education and in the quantitative phase included all high school teachers of Districts 2 and 3 of Isfahan. The purposive sampling technique was used in order to select participants in both phases. In the qualitative phase, 20 experts were employed using the chain purposive sampling method, and in the quantitative phase, teachers with MA/MSc and PhD degrees in Isfahan were selected. The data collection instruments included semi-structured interviews in the qualitative phase and a researcher-made questionnaire with 14 scales of professional qualifications for teachers in the quantitative phase. The qualitative findings were analyzed suing content analysis of interviews, and quantitative findings were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

This research is based on the experience of the faculty members of the College of Mathematics, Engineering, and Basic Sciences (STEM) at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in 2017 regarding the professional development curricula. The data of this research were extracted through a qualitative-descriptive phenomenological method with semi-structured interviewes as the tool. The collected data were analyzed through coding and categorization. Sampling in this section was targeted through a criterion type and a total of 21 individuals participated. The findings were validated by Delphi technique and expert agreements. The researchers' perceptions of the themes and concepts related to each field were collected with regard to four areas in the curriculum. Totally 37 categories were identified which were finally were classified under 4 main categories including design, implementation, field and evaluation in three areas of strengths, leading issues and desirability of curriculum. The results of this study revealed a great distance between the design and implementation was presented for the programs based on the life experience of the faculty members.

The present study aimes to investigate the challenges that primary school teachers face regarding the lesson study. To this purpose, qualitative approach and case study were used as the method in this study. In the sampling phase, the mixed variation sampling was applied in two levels. In first level, the study population was all primary schools in Hamedan which included lesson study and maximum variation sampling was used to select the case for this study. The selected case was a primary school in the city margin of Hamedan which included male and female teachers with 2 to 27 years of experiences. In the second level, research population was all the educational staff of that school (n=20) and the sample selected was equal to the population (n=20) through comprehensive sampling. These individuals were studied since the announcement of the festival's lesson study program in the fall of the academic year of 2016-17 to the publication of the results of the festival. The research tool for collecting data were semi-structured interviews with teachers and participatory observation. For data analysis, coding and categorization were used. The results showed that teachers faced three categories of challenges. Challenges before practical engagement were: knowledge in the field of study, motivation to participate in lesson study, the formation of a group and the assignment of duties of members. At the stage of the practical encountering, the challenges were: the choice of the problem for the study course, the implementation of the lesson and the collection of data, the review of teaching. After the practical encountering with lesson study, challenges were: the arbitration of study course plans, the publication of the results of the study course, the holding of the festival of research. In the end, a model was proposed with the purpose of reducing these challenges.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of technology of Quick Response Codes in education. Accordingly, a case study was answer the question "Does using quick response codes effect students' academic motivation? " The statistical population consisted of students from Islamic Azad University in 2016-2017. They were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. Experimental group using quick response codes technology based on two-dimensional bar code using fast access technology to mobile and smartphone or tablet. This barcode can provide educational content as text, image or educational video. Offer. The results of this study showed that the use of quick response codes in education has a positive effect on increasing students' academic motivation.

The goal of this study was to identify and develop an appropriate theoretical framework for designing curricula in acute crises and emergencies. In this regard, first, by document analysis and ampliative criticism methods, the consequences of crises on the society and the educational system were extracted and used as a basis for criticism and drawing a conclusion. Then, relevant taxonomies in curriculum theories were studied, and based on some criteria such as comprehensiveness and efficiency in answering the research questions, the taxonomy of Miller was selected and the positions of its expounded theories on crises were analyzed. Based on the obtained results, given the special psychological and social conditions of people who have been involved with crises, it was recognized that the guidelines of the social humanistic theory are more appropriate than the others for designing a curriculum which would help increase people's resilience and cause their faster return to normal conditions. The integrity of the theory and practice foundations of curricula in crisses is an unavoidable necessity that has been referred to in the final analysis.

The present study seeks to rethink the role of the teacher in the teachinglearning process according to the complexity theory. First the role of the teacher is explained in the traditional vision of Comenius and Dewey's critical insight and then the role of the teacher is discussed in the complexity theory. Then, the teacher’ s image as an emergence facilitator is suggested instead of their image as a representer. In this way, the facilitator role, as recommended by the complexity theory, involves creating a context for participation along with engagement and attention, hermeneutic listening, using imagination and improvising, the emergence of different interpretations, and the non-linear, unpredictable, self-regulated, and common knowledge and awareness. From this viewpoint, facilitating and learning which are considered as simultaneous and continuous and are not limited to teacher or learners, could establish a context for the emergence of common knowledge at the classroom level.

This study aimed to explain factors affecting quality of teaching and determine their impact on teaching quality. In this study, mixed research approach and sequential exploratory strategy of classification model were used for collecting the data. The population (in the qualitative phase) consisted of staff at central organization of technical and vocational university and top technicians and researchers of technical and professional university in 2011-2016; they were selected using combined sampling (homogeneous and snowball) method. The population in the quantitative phase also included the educational assistants, heads of research and education department, and faculty members in 2016. In the qualitative study, the exploratory interviews and semi-structured interviews were employed for data collection. In the quantitative study, the identified categories which were derived from encoding qualitative data were used to create paired comparison questionnaires; they included factors affecting quality of teaching. The results were analysed using AHP method. The findings indicated that the contribution of teacher, educational environment, and students were estimated to be 41, 33, and 26 percent, respectively. Among teacher components, the professional skills of teacher was determined to be the most important component; among student components, the academic records and experiences was determined to be the most significant component; and among educational environment components, quality educational spaces and equipment was determined to be the most effective component.