JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL INNOVATIONS
Year:2005 | Volume:4 | Issue:12|Papers Count:5

The concept of life skills is a great group of psychosocial and interpersonal skills that can help people make decisions, make an effective relationship, develop their coping skills and self management, and have a productive and safe life. The purpose of this study was to determine the essential life skills for Iranian high-school students, to design appropriate curriculum pattern for life skills, and to identify their effectiveness.A questionnaire with 50 items was administered on 600 high-school students (150 students from each base), a questionnaire with 50 items was administered on 240 parents and a questionnaire with 12 items was administered for 150 high-school teachers, 20 high-school curriculum experts, and 10 faculty members of the universities. The results of the study indicated that the self-awareness, effective communication, interpersonal relationship, coping with stress, decision-making, problem solving, critical thinking, and creative thinking are precedence for all groups.An appropriate curriculum pattern for life skills was also designed. This curriculum pattern includes purposes, content, type of content, instructional methods, and evaluation methods of life skills. In experimental stage of the study, curriculum of self-awareness skill, which was in first order in last stage was administered on 120 subjects by a pretest-posttest with group control design. Analysis of data indicated that teaching of self-awareness skill to students is affecting on increasing this skill. 

The traditional instructional system has been forced to undergo some modifications by various factors such as information revolution and the increasing developments of technologies. The inefficiency of the previous memory-oriented system in an era which the amount of scientific information is doubled every 5 year, has urged the teaching methods to shift from the traditional approach to a problem-solving approach. Therefore, a thorough study of the educational innovations in Iran (such as changes in educational systems, educational content, changes resulting in the transformation of educational organization, and new educational technologies) is considered as highly vital.To this end, initially, the main innovations all over the world were studied and explained in this study. Then, based on the accumulated data, a questionnaire was developed and the realization of aforementioned innovations were studied in a sample comprising 1316 male and female junior and senior high school teachers across 14 provinces.The results depicted the educational innovations currently applied in Iranian schools as well as the ones the teachers and the executive educational innovators have contrived to apply.

This research aims to identify contextual and structural variables affecting the organizational structure of OERP and designing an appropriate structure in the form of conceptual and practical situations of these variables in two conditions (status que and optimal).Prime sources, together with related researches, and data collection tools made by Rabins, five patterns of Mintzberg, practical model of Nadler – Tushman, RohRbaugh Pattern of relation between Aim and Structure, Pattern of five relations … life cycle and structure made by Larry E. Greiner and a few other patterns have been used in this research (after verifying their validity and reliability).The research findings demonstrate that three structural criteria of complexity, formality and (especially) centralization in this organization are very high and that must be reduced. Goals and strategy of the organization in statues que is in efficient level and in the optimum level but must be effective. Environment has been considered stable, clam and somehow certain, which in a real situation should be considered somehow uncertain. Size of the organization is too big at this time and must become small through reducing non–expert manpower and employing limited number of experts. At the end three organizational charts based on the model of Nadler-Tushman (matrix and hybrid) have been proposed for the organization. The nature of the charts is based on adhocracy-the pattern of Mintzberg and collectivity cycle.The findings of this research can be used as a model for designing the structure of all other educational organizations.

The objective of this article has been to survey the thinking styles among students & its relationship with the academic achievement, their gender and age in terms of the social psychology. The required data was collected from a sample including 602 students (386 girls & 316 boys) of second & third grades of high-schools in the cities of Fars province through a multistage stratified–cluster random sampling method and by Sternberg Thinking Style Scale (1997).Minimum correlation between the items of the instruments and percent of scales alpha were 34% & 66%, respectively, representative of high validity of the instruments. The research data analysis was carried out by descriptive statistics through t-test and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and at last through the multivariate regression (stepwise method).The research findings indicated that: 1. frequently, the subjects, with respect to attitude aspect, were conservative and from the viewpoint of the functional thinking were often subjected to rules and executives of instructions and in terms of level were global.2. The relations of students general thinking style with academic achievement and age was non-significant but to gender, was significant and the girls' thinking style scores was more than the boy's thinking scores (r=2.193, p= 0.022) and the boys in comparison to the girls, were more global, more conservative and more legislative.3. in general, the more the liberal attitude of students, the more their academic achievement. This conclusion was applicable for the boys (p≤0.000, r=.226), but it had no justification for the girls. Furthermore, the boys that in the functional dimension had more judicial thinking have been more successful in education (p≤0.042, r=.117), in contrast, it is incorrect for the girls.4. For girls, there was no significant relation between general thinking style & its dimensions and academic achievement. The strongest explanation of the girls' academic achievement has been their ages with a negative correlation.5. Among students (the girls & the boys), those who were older, had more academic wastage too (p≤0.000, r=-1.61). Also by increase in the age, particularly their executive thinking (obedience) (p≤0.015, r=.099) and conservative attitudes have increased (p≤0.001, r=.130). It's a noticeable point that in functional dimension, along with increase in the age, the boys have been more judicial (p≤0.024, r=.128), but the girls were more executive (more obedient) (p≤0.008, r=.164).6. The factors of age, liberal thinking and gender, respectively, have had a fundamental effect on predicting the student's academic achievement (R=0.221, R2=.049, n=558. AdR2=.044). Those students have had more academic achievement, in comparison with their classmates, who have been 1) younger and in their own educational age; and 2) those who have had more liberal attitudes; and 3) those who have been girls.7. The factors of liberal thinking style and age, respectively, have had fundamental effect on predicting the boy's academic achievement that, by having 27% of correlation in all, could have explained about 7% variance of the boy's academic achievement (R=0.265, R2=0.070, N=300, AdR2=0.064)

The current research uses meta-analysis method as a new research method to integrate research findings of application of research results. Fifteen researches in this field that were administered in ministry of education were collected from all regions of country. Nine researches have requirements for meta-analysis. The most significant research results were establishment & informational system (effect size=ES=0.6921), continuance of seminars of research findings (ES=0.6445), illustrate accurate priorities of research (ES=0.6891), reinforce technical dimension of methodologies (ES=0.5541) and research workshops for teachers (ES=0.4874) respectively.