JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL INNOVATIONS
Year:2008 | Volume:- | Issue:24|Papers Count:16

This investigation was conducted as a Preliminary Study on Gardner's multiple intelligence theory. Participants were a sample group of 120 secondary school students in different branches of study. The data was gathered by administering the Multiple Intelligence Questionnaire adapted from Douglas and Harms' questionnaires, Bell Adjustment Questionnaire, and a researcher - made questionnaire on the sample group. The following results were obtained: ·-It was shown that there were low to moderate but significant correlation among different kinds of intelligence and related school subject scores.·-Interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence scores accounts for 22 percent of the total variance of social adjustment.· Different kinds of intelligence are not totally independent from each other. There were low to moderate but significant correlations among some of them. 33 percent of the common variance among different kinds of intelligence suggests spearman’s «g» factor.· The greatest variance of educational achievement can be accounted for by verbal - linguistic and logistic – mathematical intelligence.· In regards to intrapersonal intelligence, girls are superior to boys, but boys are superior to girls in regards to visual – spatial intelligence. There was no significant difference between the two genders in other kinds of intelligence.

The rational approach is one of the main approaches to religious education. This approach has its critics and supporters. Critics of this approach believe that the rational approach - according to characteristics of rationality, cannot fit to the process that is religious; because, there is sharp distinction and conflict between religion and rationality. Therefore, based on critics' views we could not speak about rational approach to religious education.However, supporters of rational approach to religious education believe that there is close relation between rationality and religion; because religion is a rational based activity. The study of critics and supporters' view about rational approach to religious education is set forth.

It's been years in the psychology and assessment of moral development that theories of genetic epistemology and social behaviorism (which are based on Piaget, Kohlberg, and Bandura's approaches) have been in the center of attention for the psychologists and education experts and have been used by the educational counseling centers and other psychology centers in Iran. Therefore, there have not been a suitable theory and proper native assessing tools made in our country in the field of moral development. The main issue is that the theoretical foundations and the structure and content of these viewpoints are provided without considering the innate and eternal moral foundations, moral motive and feeling, moral belief and culture, and moral behavior and reactions. Such viewpoints are not in consistency with our school students' moral development. This article has shown that Piaget, Kohlberg, and Bandura's viewpoints have strictly positioned the moral judgment, learning social laws, and relations of the Western countries as the foundation for their theories without considering spiritual, rational, and motivational bases of moralities, which have roots in divine creation and the human nature.By providing a new model for moral development formation, this article has shown that individual's social and moral development is a result of complicated, dynamic, and mutual interactions of the five following factors: innate nature of the individual, social contexts, events and experiences, moral judgment development, and manifestation and change of stimulations and sentiments of sympathy and helping other people.The article tries, while criticizing the present psychological approaches on moral development, to prepare the way for a new scientific and authentic research in making theory for moral development and preparing theoretical basis for making national assessing scales for moral development.

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 evaluate their effectiveness. A questionnaire with 50 items was administered on 600 high-school students (150 students of each grade), a questionnaire with 50 items was administered on 240 parents and a questionnaire with 12 items was administered on 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 important priorities for all groups.An appropriate curriculum pattern for life skills was also designed. This curriculum pattern includes purposes, syllabus, 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 control group design. Analysis of data indicated that teaching of self-awareness skill to students is effective in advancement of 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.

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.

Constructivism approach is one of the most important theoretical frameworks in the formation and development of the new instructional revisions and activities. The main focus of constructivism is the fact that individuals construct knowledge actively. Concept map is one of the modern instructional methods in the sense that it is closely related to constructivism. The concept map is the visual representation: of meaningful relations between concepts. The main purpose of the present study is to improve the efficacy concept map as a learning-teaching strategy. Likewise the minor purpose has been to make an analogy between the effectiveness of the provision of preplanned concept maps on one hand and the development of concept maps by learners on the other. The comparison of the effectiveness of individual and cooperative methods of preparing concept maps was also taken into account. The participants of the study were 55 primary school teachers who participated in three discrete in-service training classes. The research project was a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and pos-test. The participants were assigned to three experimental groups.The first experimental group was given pre-planned concept maps in the process of classroom education. The second experimental group prepared the concept maps individually. Meanwhile the third experimental group prepared the concept maps cooperatively. Research results revealed that the post-tests averages increased compared to pre-tests averages but the efficacy maximal was observed in the group of individually preparing concept maps. The least efficacy is observed in the provision of pre-planned concept maps.

In this research educational decision-making system was studied based on five (internal and external) factors including: environment of decision-making (suprasystems), structure of decision-making, process of decision-making, implementing of decision-making, and evaluation and feedback of decision-making. Data was gathered by questionnaire from two groups, members of the Faculties of Education settled in Tehran and staff managers and specialists of the Ministry of Education. Findings show that the educational decision-making system has many imperfections with structural factors being the most important and implementation factors the least of them. Furthermore, the study samples emphasize decentralization of educational decision-making system.

The purpose of the current research was to investigate the relation of cognitive precedent variables (counting capability, visualizing, hearing perception and metacognitive knowledge) with mathematical competence in preschool children in city of Isfahan. Statistical population of the study was 199 children (ages between 5 and 6 years) who were randomly selected. Research instruments were Utrecht Mathematical Competency, Counting Capability Test, Visualizing Attention Test, Meta-cognitive Abilities Test, and Reading Comprehension Test. Findings indicate that counting capability %49, meta-cognitive knowledge %46, visualizing attention %41, and hearing perception %38 predict mathematical competence in children. It is suggested that preschool coaches reinforce mentioned skills in children.

Educating the graduates with cognitive potentials and emotional tendencies for research and innovation has been the ideal for all the education systems throughout the world. It has been also considered a necessity and a national will for our country (Iran). There is no doubt that this important goal should become a reality by the most fundamental element of education i.e. The Teacher. The aim of the present research is investigating the effectiveness of teaching by the problem solving method. It is also to evaluate establishment and raising of research moral among the school students based on the research indexes. A pilot project took place consisting of two test groups and one control group. We selected a total of 68 students from two schools in Tehran (Iran). The students were from three classes in fourth grade. The education year was of 2005-2006. The three independent variables were randomly applied on the mentioned population in the science and geography courses. These variables were: a) teaching by problem solving method along with the evaluation based on research indexes, b) teaching by problem solving method without the evaluation based on research indexes, and c) teaching based on traditional method. Research moral, as the dependent variable, was evaluated on the three indexes of A) attitude toward research, B) the pupils' performance in the examinations containing the questions about researching issues, and C) research oriented class activities. The obtained results showed that teaching by problem solving with/without the evaluation based on research indexes is more efficient than teaching by the traditional method. This was with the probability of 0.99. We found, there was no significant difference between the teaching with the evaluation based on research indexes and teaching without the evaluation based on research indexes. This similarity was in terms of their efficiency in raising research moral among the research population.

The main prupose of this study was to investigate the relationship between learning styles, self-efficacy beliefs and academic fields in high school students. In this research, we have been seeking to find whether there is significant relationship between the element of study field and learning style, between the elements of self-efficacy belief and field of study, and the elements of gender and self-efficacy. Self-efficacy consists of the beliefs a person has toward his abilities in order to organize the phenomenon to reach his desired state with suitable behavior and act (Mortazavi, 2005).Studies indicated that the amount of self-efficacy beliefs is differing based on the people's age and gender. And self-efficacy belief increases with the increase in age in both genders and it is higher in men (Tuckman, and others 1987). Learning styles refer to beliefs and behaviors that people use to help them in learning in a specific situation (Hohen, 1999). The studies about learning styles have indicated that the various learning styles differ with gender, academic field and education level (Philibin and others 1995), (Hicksoen and Baltimore 1996). (Hhsseini Largani 1998), (Miransari 1999). The sample group in this study includes 399 female and male students that were selected form students of Boldaji schools in 2004-2005 academic year.In order to evaluate learning methods we administered Cob's learning style inventory (1985) and to evaluate self efficacy beliefs, Bandore's self-efficacy beliefs inventory were used.The result indicates that the students of mathematics physics field have the divergent learning style, the students of empirical sciences field have assimilate learning style, and students of human sciences field have accommodate learning style. The students of mathmaticsphysics field have the highest self-efficacy compared to others. Significance was not seen between learning methods and self-efficacy belief and female students are in a higher level compared to male students in self efficacy beliefs. In order to increase self-efficacy we suggest the use of a successful student model, verbal persuasion, and mastery experiences and the providing of suitable conditions for gaining successful experience.

In the active and full of competition world of today, management of organizations is a complex and difficult task. Old approaches however, cannot be implied to solve today's problems. Therefore "learning for the purpose of problem-solving" and "learning with the aim of expansion and development" have been added to their strategic policy. The pioneers know that by using predetermined regularities they cannot achieve missions: they need the learning opportunities, by which they meet the urgent new demands. The study at hand examines the qualities of "organization learning" of Mashhad primary schools, middle school and high schools. By the survey method, 36 schools were randomly selected as the research sample (including 36 principals and 180 teachers). This sample was gathered using the multi-level clustered sampling method. Data was collected and analyzed by reliable question are, open interview, and planned observation. The findings show, based on Peter Senge disciplines, that there are significant differences between existing conditions with respect to the ability to learn in schools and the ideal conditions in Senge's five fundamental principles. Furthermore, based on the main research variable, the difference in school years is significant. This is while there is no significance for the difference between education districts.

The purpose of the present research was to investigate the effect of self-efficacy and achievement goals as motivational variables and learning strategies and persistence as cognitive variables on student mathematics achievement. Tehran public secondary schools were stratified and 389 boy and girl students from among third grade of the secondary schools were selected randomly. A questionnaire consists of 6 sub scales including self-efficacy, mastery goals, performance approach goals, avoidance-approach goals, learning strategies and persistence adopted from instruments of Miller and et.al. (1996) and Middleton and Midgley (1997) was administered.Furthermore, students' final math exam grades were used to assess their achievement. Path analysis method was used for data analysis. The results revealed that there was a relatively good fit between the hypothesized model and the observed data. The direct effects of performance-approach goals, avoidance-approach goals, self-efficacy, learning strategies and persistence on mathematics achievement were confirmed.Self-efficacy had the most direct effect on mathematics achievement, compare to other variables of the proposed model. Mastery goals had a significant indirect effect on mathematics achievement through self-efficacy, learning strategies and persistence. The mediating role of persistence between avoidance-approach goals and mathematics achievement was significant but small in magnitude.

In order to inquire about users' attitudes of research findings, some forms of use of findings were studied, which entitled Utilization Models, and identified four major models including; Linear Translation Model, Problem solving Model, Enlightenment Model, and Interaction Model. Then, three groups of users including teachers, experts, and administrators were compared.Data was gathered from 181 users by a researcher made questionnaire. The sample was selected from 8 districts and Education Organization of Tehran Province by multistage sampling. Data was analyzed by paired-sample t-test in each group. Results revealed that users had positive attitudes toward interaction, linear translation, problem solving, and enlightenment models, respectively.There was no difference of orders of models between users' groups except significance between them. That is, all of observed differences were significant in administrators' answers, but there was no significant difference between linear translation and interactive models and also between problem solving and enlightenment models in researchers and experts answers. In addition, the difference between linear translation model and interactive model was not significant. Results showed that interactive and linear translation models were more important models in users' view. Enlightenment model had the lowest attitudes, so due to its benefits, it should be introduced to users of research findings.

The present research aims at appraising educational applications of learning theories practiced in mathematics instructional videos at primary level produced by Educational Technology Bureau of Ministry of Education in Iran. To conduct this research, principles of educational presentation were extracted from learning theories once these theories were studied. The extent to which these principles are followed up in each and every episode of the films mentioned earlier has later been examined through method of "content analysis".The results of examining 105 episodes of "mathematics educational films" at primary level 5th grade revealed that certain educational applications of learning theories have been overlooked in production of such programs. The most frequent applications of such methods are as follows: transparency of objectives; review of prerequisite materials; draw-up of advanced organizers; attraction of viewers' attention; organization of educational materials; rational conclusion; and ending of each episode. The research came up with the findings below: 1) Behavioral goals are not fully and explicitly defined in any of the episodes. 2)Pre-requisite materials are scarcely surveyed and advanced organizers are almost not presented, particularly in educational programs for first, second and third grades students (only in one out of 62 episodes the pre-requisites have been reviewed and in 6 episodes the advanced organizers have been displayed). 3) Drawing addressees' attention through non-verbal methods has been accomplished far and large in 12% of episodes at each grade, while they are not assisted by various advantages of motion pictures and video capturing systems. 4) Materials have not been organized in most episodes (77%). And 5) concluding as well as ending most parts of the videos for first, second, and third grades (concluding in, 89% and ending in 81% of episodes) are unclear.

The present research, which is in the domain of descriptive, applied and evaluation researches have been implemented with the aim of "performance (outputs) quality evaluation of the second region Vocational Schools in city of Tehran." The data gathering sources in the stage of "judgment criteria" compiling have been surveyed. The survey was done by census and simple random sampling methods. The data gathering sources included experts and professors, the learners, administrators and assistants in Technical Schools and vocational and technical education experts. In the stage of "output quality evaluation," these were vocational school administrators, alumni, and direct employers of employed alumni.To carry out the research, needed factors (7 factors) and indicators (45 indicators) had been compiled in two sections of "economic and non-economic" outputs. This was through adopting "existed national and international experiences," "organizational element model", and "education indicators systems". Using the "Judgment Criteria Questionnaire" and "Delphi Technique," judgment criteria (39 criteria) had been then determined. Using compiled factors and indicators, research tools including three questionnaires were advised regarding the validity (content validity) and reliability (Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient) characteristics. Having gathered the data, using compiled judgment criteria, the existed situation had been evaluated. Results show that, among seven factors, 5 factors including Intermediate Output (dropout and educational achievement), Fulfillment of Educational and Social Goal, Alumni (knowledge, skill, and creativity), Employment and Unemployment and Entrepreneurship are in an "undesirable" level and two factors including: Promotion rate to higher education institution and employers satisfaction are in "quite desirable" level. Both of "economic" and "non-economic" outputs had been evaluated in an "undesirable" level. Finally, the performance of vocational schools had been evaluated in an "undesirable" level. Some recommendations are provided for quality improvement of the present situation. Results of this research can be used for future planning of the vocational school programs and their comprehensive quality improvement.