Reading and Writing and Divine Gifts: Do the Textbooks Contain Features of Philosophy for Children Program?

The main purpose of the present study was to examine to what extent the features implied in Philosophy for Children program were observed in the contents of the elementary school text books، Reading and Writing and Devine Gifts published in academic year of 1389-1390. Content analysis was used as the method of the study and a checklist including the criteria of teaching Philosophy for Children was utilized for data collection. The criteria included the concepts of reasoning، conceptualization، and judgment and their 12 related components. The statistical universe encompassed the Reading and Writing and Devine Gifts textbooks in 14 volumes and the sampling population comprised the whole society. Descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. Analyzing contents of the books، 986 components related to the concepts of philosophical thinking were identified. The results indicated that reasoning enjoyed the highest frequency whereas the least frequency belonged to making judgments. Also، Reading and Writing included more philosophical thinking features as compared to Divine Gifts.