JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL INNOVATIONS
Year:2014 | Volume:12 | Issue:48|Papers Count:10

This study was conducted to investigate the nature of religious experience in William Alston's viewpoint, and the possibility of its application in education. In terms of Alston, religious experience is a kind of perception that in addition to having a common structure with sensory experiences, it plays an effective role in justifying the religious beliefs. The distinction between Alston's perspective and other philosophers' is the necessity of having (internal) immediate intuition to God. Therefore, in this respect, communication and interaction with God is considered as the aim of human creation, trying to justify the true beliefs with a trust-based approach. This research seeks to answer basic questions including epistemological principles and the nature of religious experience, the consequences of its application in education and criticisms to Alston's view. It seems that this approach can be useful in religious experience in at least three domains: educational objectives, and teaching–learning methods that resort to spiritual intelligence. It was a theoretical and philosophical study and its methodology was descriptive–analytical. Alston's opinions and the translated articles and books on this subject were studied as the primary and secondary sources related to this topic. The criticisms against Alston's view on similarities between religious and sensory experience were investigated. The result of this study was a model that was suggested based on some propositions -with the aim of having a spiritual connection with God and by considering the principles of sublimity, the perfection of the student and the universality of the possibility of experience. Such an approach requires educators with spiritual qualities that pledged to the methods like discussion and the participation of students in the education process.

The main purpose of this study was investigating the role of two factors, gender and grade level in students’ math performance to solve a none-routine problem. The research sample included 836 lower secondary school (guidance school) students (414 females and 422 males) in the south part of Iran. These students were asked to solve a none-routine problem within the sheet that was provided beforehand. Then, the students’ strategies were coded upon modified theoretical framework –extracted from literature review of math education domain. The data were analyzed using Chi square test, H. Kruskal-Wallis test and U Mann- Whitney test. The results showed that there are gender differences. Indeed, at the 0.01 level of significance, there exists enough evidence to conclude that males have better performance comparing with females. Also, the results indicated that at the 0.05 level of significance, there exists enough evidence to conclude that there is a difference among the three grades. Indeed, performance of students in grade 7 (first grade of guidance school) was better than the performance of students in grade 8 (second grade of guidance school).

The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze mathematical models and important frameworks that researchers and educators have suggested to discuss people’s response to issues related to proof in mathematics. Eight models have been introduced and analyzed. Each of these models categorizes a way of students’ reasoning and proof. Of course, some of these classifications are more accurate and detailed. According to the researchers' explanation for the different classes of models, a table was presented that shows the overlap and distinction between these classes. The results of models’ analysis shows that people’s response to issues related to proof can be classified in two ways: a. regardless of individuals’ opinions on the proof, and solely on the basis of their reasoning methods, and b. depending on the type of thinking during the process of proof and also their reasoning methods for presenting the proof. Using the models under study, a new framework was proposed; so that various mathematical reasoning could be classified using it. In this framework, the reasoning of people during the proof of a proposition was classified based on the type and method of presentation. Using this method, we can demonstrate the ability of students on the process of proof and furthermore we can study the way of their thinking and their views about this process. It seems that the proposed framework could cover different classes of models presented by other researchers.

Green Chemistry means manufacture of new products using new techniques that fits the three objectives of sustainable environment, sustainable economy and sustainable society. The purpose of this study was presenting some strategies for introducing green chemistry into the chemistry curriculum of secondary school, using the experiences of the developed countries in this regard. It was a qualitative research, that using the comparative (Bereday's method) method, Green chemistry education curriculum of America, Australia, China, England, and Iran have been reviewed. To determine the characteristics of secondary school green chemistry education, the essential elements of the green chemistry education of chemistry curriculum of the mentioned developed countries including logic, objectives, content, teaching methods and methods of assessment of green chemistry education have been reviewed. The results indicated that the green chemistry education of Iran is very different from that of the mentioned developed countries. Thus, based on the findings of this study, ways of integrating green chemistry education at the chemistry curriculum was presented. Then, professors, curriculum experts and environment experts’ views on the suggested strategies for the proposed curriculum were collected through semi-structured interview. Respondents believed that the suggested strategies are appropriate for inclusion in the chemistry curriculum and their introduction into the chemistry curriculum is essential. Findings of this research can be used for the development of the new chemistry curriculum or for the enrichment of the current curriculum through its integration with green chemistry education.

The aim of the present study was to investigate 5th grade primary school student's misconceptions about heat and temperature, concepts that are important in school science curricula and closely related to daily life. A sample including 136 primary school students who were studying at the 5th grade in 4 educational school districts of 6th region of Tehran were selected and participated in the study. A test comprising five open-ended and multiple-choice diagnostic questions and also semi-structured interviews were used to collect the required data. Findings showed that students have many various and different conceptions about heat and temperature and many of which have not been previously documented. In the light of the study, it can be suggested that due to the Ministry of Education’s recent revisions of the science education curricula and instructional materials, further emphasis should be put on heat and temperature and its modeling in related course books.

Students’ misbehaviors are one of the main reasons for occupational stress among teachers. This study was designed to achieve two goals: a) identifying the varieties of students’ misbehaviors and b) determining the frequency of the indiscipline behavior in the secondary school classrooms. The qualitative research method, i.e., content analysis and a quantitative research method, i.e., a within-group design were used in this research. The research samples consisted of 47 teachers, who were selected using convenience sampling method for the first goal and 255 teachers who were selected using random sampling method for the second goal of this study. Two researcher-made instruments were used for the measurement of data. The first one was an open-ended questionnaire that was used for extracting the list of the students' stressful behaviors from the sample of the teachers. The second instrument was a questionnaire with 35 items. The items were selected through content analysis and exploratory factor analysis from students’ stressful behaviors. The results of exploratory factor analysis showed that the stressful behaviors of students can be classified into five categories: insulting the teacher, breaking of the laws, distractibility, teacher challenging and classmates harass. The results of repeated measures ANOVA showed that the greatest amount of stress among teachers were due to challenging misbehaviors and the least amount of stress were due to the classmates harass. Also, the results showed that breaking of the law misbehavior has the highest and insulting the teacher misbehavior has the lowest frequency of occurrence.

School is a context for learning and training the future generation. So, if the school context encourages creativity, the next generation will be creative people. One of the most important features of context that enriches creativity is architectural feature of the building. The architectural features, along with management features, educational programming and curriculum can make a school so that it improves creativity. The purpose of this research was analyzing various theories of teaching creativity and surveying the effect of art on people's creativity in order to understand to what extent and how artistic space affects students' creativity. The most important research questions included: 1. does the use of art at school affect students' creativity? And 2.How can we interpret the effect of use of art on students' creativity? To answer these questions, a school was selected randomly among guidance schools of 11th educational district of city of Tehran. And then, three classrooms were selected randomly among the second grade classrooms. The relationship between artistic space and students' creativity was measured through the use of empirical and semi-empirical research methods. The first classroom was the control one, the second classroom was the one in which the space changes was imposed upon, and the third classroom was the one in which the students have been familiar with artistic concepts, in addition to having space changes. The period of instruction was two months and Torrance Test of Creative Thinking has been used before and after the two months period to measure the students’ creativity. Findings indicated that artistic space affects students' creativity. However, this effect is not linear, and has incompatibilities in some cases.