Fractal Pattern of PhD Curriculum Studies in Iranian Higher Education Curriculum with Cross-Cultural Approach

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Zahra Shahbazi ¹
• Mehdi Kalantari ²
• Alireza Sadeghi ³
• Mahmood Mehrmohammadi ⁴

¹ PhD student of curriculum, Islamic Azad of Roodehen Branch, Roodehen, Iran

² Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Islamic Azad University of Roodehen Branch, Roodehen, Iran.

³ Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, University of Allameh Tabatabaee, Tehran, Iran.

⁴ .Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, University of Tarbiat Modares, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to design and validate a PhD curriculum template in Iranian higher education curriculum studies with an intercultural approach. The research method was qualitative, inductive qualitative content analysis, and systematic review of fourteen selected qualitative articles aimed at extracting the main and sub-categories and dimensions of fractal pattern of Iranian higher education doctoral curriculum studies with an intercultural approach. At first, the titles of 300 books and articles were reviewed. Then, 47 authoritative articles were selected internationally by the researcher and finally 14 qualitative articles were selected for the research subject. After coding, the main and sub-categories of this process were extracted.. Based on the content of the articles, 295 primary themes (codes) and 44 categories and 9 dimensions and 7 themes were abtained. The research results indicated the general categories identified in a fractal model including requirements (software dimension and hardware dimension in application – non application), objectives (general objectives dimension and partial objectives dimension in accessible – inaccessible range), Content attributes (quality dimension in the spectrum: related – unrelated), teaching – learning methods (dimension of conformity of teaching methods – learning with cross – cultural approach in the spectrum of –proportion – disproportion), master features (dimension of cultural power in high – low spectrum) and dimension of scientific rank in the rich and non – rich spectrum, evaluation (the dimension of evaluation quality in the favorable – unfavorable spectrum) which illustrated the fractal pattern design components of the PhD curriculum studies with an intercultural approach to higher education in Iran. Finally, the model validation process was completed by experts in this field and the three – way validation method, was at least 0.89 and 0.99 maximum.

Keywords

• higher education
• Fractal model
• curriculum
• Intercultural

20.1001.1.20086369.1399.11.42.12.3

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