JOURNAL OF EDUCATION
Year:2005 | Volume:21 | Issue:3 (83)|Papers Count:7

Ever since 1910 A.D. when the first educational publication was printed in Iran, a number of journals in this field have been published by the Ministry of Education of which the QJE with a 20-year history is one. During this period close to 400 articles and reports on international/ regional conferences on education have been published in this journal. Of the publishedarticles.15% are based on field research, 7%on comparative research, 11% are reports of evaluation research, and the rest are analytical and descriptive articles. The research based articles include suggestions that could be followed up by the educational administrators and practitioners. In other articles issues that the Iranian educational system is riddled with are discussed. Certain sets of articles are published in special issues dealing with the theoretical topics in education and hence strengthening the bond between theory and practice.Although judgment on the QJE requires more extensive evaluations, its publication should be considered as a constructive step towards the solution of many problems with which the educational system is faced.

School failure with its major manifestations in school drop outs, grade repetitions, qualitative decline, and expulsions in a major issue in many countries. Because of its multiple causes, school failure has been addressed differently in different countries depending on the existing social, demographical, familial, and educational conditions. As such as the structure of the educational system, instructional methods, curricula, educational activities and programs along with the socio-cultural and economic, as well as the psycho-physiological factors.The present article is aimed at delineating factors affecting school failure through a review of the conducted research on the very concept of school failure and its dimensions. In doing so, two types of factors, internal and external to the educational system, are identified and their primacy determined in order to pave the way for conclusions and suggestions. The importance of identifying the at-risk students, attending to the multiplicity of causes, and the necessity of paying attention to a cocktail of remedies including the socio-cultural and economic conditions of the students are among the most important findings of this paper.

Formative evaluation refers to the ongoing process of measuring and judging the students' learning throughout a given course of study and using its outcome to improve the process. In this article, not only the extents of knowing about and using this type of evaluation among Hamedani teachers are explored, but the barriers preventing its implementation by them are also discussed. The sample consisted of all teacher and students in fourth grade studying in Hamedan in the academic year of 1382-1383.The findings show that the targeted population's knowledge about the concepts, definitions, implementation processes, and methods of formative evaluation is only about average, and as a result uses it very little. Because of not knowing, teachers are not capable of designing and implementing an Evaluation program, analyzing results and giving feed back to students.

A group of 50 high school students were randomly assigned to three, two experimental and on control, groups with each having high, middle, and low level achieving students. They wrer all initially tested on reading comprehension and academic self concept. The same tests were given following the instructional treatments to the two experimental groups.The analysis of the collected data reveals the effectiveness of both methods in reading comprehension and academic self concept of the subjects.

The main purpose of comparative studies in education is to learn from other countries' experiences in improving their educational system, rather than transferring the achievements of one country to another. In the area of moral and religious education, many countries like Japan, England, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia have incorporated it into their curricula at different levels. In Iranian elementary schools this type of education is offered through special textbooks as well as the language and social studies text books. The teaching method used in Iran has been the traditional method of memorization of the presented material for the purpose of regurgitation and gaining a grade, while ignoring other, since 1958, an hour of moral education is conducted in both elementary and high schools using different strategies like the combinatory approach wherein the moral values are learned along with the scientific concepts.The purpose of the present paper is to highlight the similarities and Differences between Iran and the four countries mentioned above, in their Curricula in terms of outlooks, goals, contents, and methods of teaching and evaluation.