A Content Analysis of Iran’s High School Textbook of Contemporary History Regarding Critical Thinking

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• P. Ghiasi
• H. Fani
• Z. Abazari
• R. Khajehzadeh

Abstract

This study was carried out to analyze the content of Iran’s Contemporary History textbook concerning critical thinking. A use was made of a descriptive method to determine the indices of critical thinking and content analysis was used to analyze the textbook content. The sample of the study consisted of 2818 sentences (i.e., the whole population) extracted from Iran’s Contemporary History textbook. The data collection instrument was a content analysis checklist of Iran’s Contemporary History textbook developed based on the theoretical framework whose validity was approved by the specialists of education. The unit of analysis was the sentences cited in Iran’ Contemporary History textbook. The results showed that 34.63% of sentences in the content of the textbook was related to critical thinking; out of which, 22.14% of sentences pertained to Cognitive indexes, %6.88 to Affective indexes, and 5.61% to Psycho-motor indexes. The results showed that the distribution of critical thinking indexes were imbalanced in the textbook content. Moreover, Cognitive component was attended three times more than Affective and Psycho-motor components. This is not appropriate for teaching critical thinking.

Keywords

• Content analysis
• Iran's contemporary history
• high school
• critical thinking

20.1001.1.20086369.1390.2.8.10.0

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