Environmental Education in Iranian school Curriculum,Acontent analyses of Social Studies and science textbooks

Document Type : Original Research Paper

Authors

1 Faculty of Psychology and Education,Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

2 Faculty of Psychology and Education,Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran. Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

3 Faculty of Psychology and Education, Tabriz University, Tabriz, Iran

4 Department of Curriculum Studies,Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The present study has been carried out with the aim of content analysis (CA) of newly-prepared
textbooks for social studies and science of the sixth grade based on the three environment education grounds, i.e.
ecology, environment, and human activity. It is of CAand descriptive nature. The statistical population was all the
sixth grade textbooks pages and the statistical sample was equal to the statistical population. The Shannon
Entropy Method has been employed for the CA. The analysis unit has been the textbook pages (texts, images,
questions, and exercises). The components and indexes for the concept of Environment education based on the
study literature and sources and their validity have been confirmed by environment and education authorities.
The results show that the highest frequency in the content of these textbooks is allocated to ecology, human
activities and environment, respectively. Furthermore, human activities and environment are more prominent in
the science textbook rather than the social studies ones, although ecology is more obvious in the latter. In terms
of informational load and importance in these textbooks, ecology, environment, and human activitywere themain
grounds for the environment education, respectively. In sum, in these textbooks the three aforementioned grounds
have not been presented parallel to each other and some modifications to the content of these textbooks are
required to make them more understandable for the Iranian students.

Keywords