JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL INNOVATIONS
Year:2010 | Volume:9 | Issue:33|Papers Count:9

In this research, we analyzed and assessed Iran's elementary school Farsi curriculum (Bekhanim-Benvisim) at three stages of designed, developed and implemented curriculum based on holistic approach in curriculum and language arts instruction. The research has been done at 4 stages: 1) Through emphasis on holistic approach in language arts instruction through investigating the theoretical foundation and related literature on language arts education, the criteria were determined. Also, the designed elementary school Farsi curriculum was primarily identified. 2) based on two categories of criteria (taken from theoretical foundation of holistic approach and the criteria taken from the designed elementary school Farsi curriculum) the designed curriculum and the developed content was described and assessed. 3) the implemented curriculum was assessed at two phases (second to fifth elementary grade) and 4 phases of observation of 24 classes of sample (3 educational districts of Tehran, 3 girl schools and 3 boy schools at each educational district), with 6 clasess at each grade (second to fifth grade) and 186 to 206 students from each grade. 4) through comparing, analyzing and interpreting the findings obtained from the assessment of elementary school Farsi curriculum, the changes and shortcomings of the curriculum and the required revisions was suggested. The findings indicated the limited attention to holistic approach and the criteria for the designed elementary school Farsi curriculum. It became clear that the concept of holistic approach in the developed curriculum and textbooks is a limited one. Considering the existing methodological and instructional limitations, the instructions during the academic year do no have a remarkable influence on enhancing the students' holistic view. The detailed findings of this paper present an almost exact picture of shortcomings of the existing curriculum and instructions.

In this article using Derrida's ideas and emphasizing his disagreement about supremacy of speech over writing, we are going to deduct some principles and methods for improving verbal communicative process in education. At first, it seems that establishing a logical link between Derrida's ideas and verbal communicative process is impossible. However, the hidden effect of them on each other can solve a lot of communicative problems. So, we analyzed different educational levels according to the importance of writing and speaking in each of them. According to this research, we believe that we can apply simple style of writing at primary school level and more complicated dimensions of writing at upper educational levels. For primary school level, we recommend the use of symbols and pictures, and for guidance school and high school levels, we could use students' writing capabilities and special opportunities that writing provides for students such as more possibility for thinking, being multidimensional, and having capacity for interpretation and deconstruction of written texts.

This research takes an inside view in exploring the issue of globalization and localization in education. The inside view, that is the view internal to education, seeks to answer the question of whether the concept of global curriculum is comprehensible and debatable independent of the implications of external systems such as global economic systems for the school curriculum which is the dominant mode of discourse in this field. The author has tried to answer this question by referring to a normative theory suggested by Eisner and known as cognitive pluralism. The investigation led to the conclusion that school curriculum can and in fact should rely on a uniform comprehensive cognitive map which can be substantially adapted to fit the needs and priorities of each local context. The resulting curriculum is therefore responsive to local cultural requirements while resting on a global framework. The cognitive pluralistic framework is the author's basis in arguing for an internal or first order approach to issue of global curriculum.

In this paper, we investigated the necessity and direction of changes in Iran's school mathematics curriculum from teachers' viewpoints with the aim of enhancing Iranian students' performances in solving situated problems. In order to conduct this research, we used some of the released mathematics problems in PISA at 2000 and 2003. For choosing situated mathematics problems, we considered problems which were more aligned with Iranian culture. The selected problems were then translated in Persian and 14 math teachers read them. Then, they were used for the current study. In the next stage, a questionnaire consisting of 6 items was designed and administered along with a series of semi-constructed interviews, with the goal of having more in-depth understanding on Iranian mathematics teachers' viewpoints about the necessity and direction of a desired change. Findings from this stage of the study showed that from the teachers' viewpoints, the Iranian students' performances in solving problems similar to PISA-situated mathematics problems- is not satisfactory. The teachers' viewpoints were based on their beliefs that (i) the mathematics textbooks do not have enough emphasis on enhancing students' mathematics literacy which focuses on meaningful contexts and (ii) the external assessments have negative effects on mathematics teaching.

The aim of the current research was to investigate the relationship between different forms of questions, namely open ended–multiple choice and metacognitive processes (self checking and cognitive strategy) and affection (effort and worry) in math course assessment. 380 first grade high school students (190 boys, 190 girls) was selected via multistage randomized clustering method. Instruments were O'Neil and Brown questionnaire for measuring metacognitive and affective processes and math performance assessment test. findings indicated that there is a positive and significant relationship between math performance (considering multiple choice questions) and self checking and also there is a positive and significant relationship between math performance (considering open-ended questions) and cognitive strategy. The other finding was that there is a positive and significant relationship between math performance (considering open-ended questions) and affective process, namely effort and worry.

The main purpose of this study was to analyze the content of primary school textbooks, based on the components of health education. The components considered in this study were skin hygine, oral health, sport and body movement, nutrition, illness (AIDS), cigarette and drug problems. The content analysis method was Shannon Entropy Method and unit of analysis was page (text, questions, practices and pictures) that included 3467 pages. Research population consisted of all elementary books, containing 36 textbooks in academic year 1387-1388 on eight topics,(Read) Farsi, (write) Farsi, Science, Heavenly Gifts, Heavenly gifts (homework), Koran, math and social education. The sample consisted of textbooks on seven topics including: (Read) Farsi, (write) Farsi, Science, Heavenly Gifts, Heavenly Gifts ( homework), Koran and Social Studies. The results showed that there was more attention to sport and body movement components than other components and less attention was paid to illness component. Meanwhile, none of the indicators of the above-mentioned components was considered in a balanced way and textbooks have not covered components of health education consistently.

The present study was designed to investigate the impact of social skill training on social adjustment and academic performance in slow learners. For this purpose, 50 male slow learners in second grade of primary schools in Khodabandeh (a city of Zanjan province) (between 7 and 9 years old) were randomly selected. The experimental design with pre-post test and experimental and control groups was used. The Matson Evaluation of Social Skills with Youngsters (MESSY), Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale and researcher-made tests of academic achievement were used as pre-test and post-test. Experimental group, then, were taught social skills for 12 sessions. When the sessions on teaching social skills was over, the two groups were compared using post-test, Statistical analysis of the data showed that the intervention program has a significant impact (p<0.01) on enhancing social adjustment and academic performance of slow learners.