JOURNAL OF EDUCATION
Year:2018 | Volume:34 | Issue:1 (133) |Papers Count:10

To identify the shortcomings and challenges facing the academic guidance program in the Iranian educational system, as reflected in over fifty years of research in this area, more than fifty research reports are examined and the ups and downs of this program are analyzed. It is apparent that this program is not adequately implemented and its goals are not achieved. The analysis of the research findings has led to the recognition of a set of hurdles that keep this program from being successful. Suggestions as to how overcome these hurdles or inhibitors are given: creating the right context, clarification of society’ s needs and possibilities, improving the knowledge and skills of the guidance staff, attempting to know and guide students continuously and seriously throughout their schooling years and up to the stage of competency in self-guidance, and continued evaluations and research on the topic.

It is assumed that students’ academic achievement can improve if teachers’ academic optimism increases. However, this relationship seems to be mediated by individual citizenship behavior. With the aim of helping with the improvement of students’ academic achievement, in this research the mediation role of individual citizenship behavior is explored. To this end, a sample of 113 female teachers was randomly selected from among all teachers in the city of Karaj. The sample’ s individual citizenship behavior and academic optimism were measured using two questionnaires. The students’ academic achievement was estimated by their mean scores on math and science courses. The validity and reliability of all instruments were confirmed. Data analysis using Pearson correlation and path analysis lead to a structural equation wherein the direct and indirect effects of teachers’ optimism on academic achievement can be detected. Results show that not only academic optimism directly and significantly affects achievement it also impacts it indirectly through individual citizenship behavior.

Due to the significance of turning from external control to internal, as a central value in the field of religious-moral education the present research is focused on determining the logic and content of a curriculum for teaching the value of self-control. As a result, and with the purpose of clarifying the concept of self-control, initially attempts are made to clarify the perspectives of both religion and psychology on this matter using the conceptual analysis on the one hand, and synthesizing the theoretical foundations, on the other. Having that achieved, the merging of these two perspectives at the nucleus level is attempted using the compounding method. Then the logic and content of a curriculum was derived from the conceptual clarification. The results show that the logical foundation of teaching self-control is not necessarily religiously inspired; rather it is hidden in our existential necessities and the need to face it consciously. The content of the curriculum, too, considering the requirements of self-control, is suggested in two main areas of knowing and caring for oneself. In organizing the content, the combinatory approach is emphasized. This model in two forms is presented: a) combination of subjects and themes risen from the concept of self-control (as a separate subject/course), and b) combination of the same elements in order to connect to other subjects in the curriculum.

The world is facing an energy crisis brought about by the ever increasing consumption of fossil fuels that leads to pollution and health problems. The renewable clean energies must be used if we are to witness economic development and reduce fossil fuel consumption. To this end, educational systems play an important role as they are the initial stage wherein the concept of clean/renewable energies can be dealt with. Solar, wind, geothermal, and biogas energies that are clean, renewable, and abundant, need to be covered in our textbooks in order to prepare the grounds for the expansion of their use. Whether that is the case in Iranian elementary school textbooks or not, 2836 pages of all such textbooks were content analyzed. The findings show that solar energy coverage has the highest frequency and significance, while tidal, geothermal, and waves energies are the least frequently covered topic in these books.

To identify the challenges facing elementary school teachers in teaching bilingual students in Farsi, a group of 31 such teachers (14 of them men) ages 28-43 and 5-29 years of teaching experience, were interviewed on their experiences related to the said challenge. The so collected narratives were coded and analyzed. Findings are indicative of teachers having many difficulties while teaching in Farsi as the textbooks have a fundamental problem and that is being written in standard Farsi with no attention given to the local languages which are quite diverse across the country. This has led to the confusion of students matching their language to one that they have not used before. Students do not comprehend the texts that well and as a result cannot use them correctly. The respondents are of the opinion that combining local languages with the standard Farsi not only does not decrease the value of the official language, but improves its learning too. The use of these findings in writing textbooks and in teacher training programs would be advantageous.

Learning English in Iran is quite popular, yet not all are successful at this task. To shed light on this dilemma and its root causes, the roles of socio-economic status and motivational selves among Iranian English learners are explored in this research. A total of 892 participants in this research sampled through proportional sampling from among high school and university students. Measures used are questionnaires on motivational selves and socio-economic status, and a standard test in English language skills. Analysis of the collected data shows that the ideal and ought-to selves, next to attitude towards learning English, explain the variance in English language skills. Furthermore, it is the attitude in the learning environment, rather than other people’ s expectation through ought-to self, that informs motivation. Also the SES mediates the effect of the ideal self on second language learning, i. e. those with high SES who have a better ideal self, learn language skills better than those with low SES because the former do not benefit from a high ideal self.

Changing the way that students’ learning is evaluated to what is called descriptive evaluation during the past decade has been the focus of many studies with conflicting results. To clarify the picture and determine the true impact of this type of evaluation on cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning, 52 studies were chosen for meta-analysis from among all such studies accessible. Following a sensitivity analysis, 21 asymmetric effect sizes, from among 135 identified, were eliminated and the combined effect size for the remaining 114 in both fixed and randomized models was assessed to be 0. 558 and 0. 505, respectively. The significance of both effect sizes is indicative of moderate effectiveness of descriptive evaluation in all three dimensions of learning, with the cognitive dimension being most affected, while the effect on affective learning is the least. Further analyses of variance showed significant difference between the effect sizes on different learning outcomes.