Identifying and Analyzing the Existing Gaps in Researches Done in the Field of Teaching Quran

Due to the special status of the religion of Islam in the culture of the Iranians in our country and the special place Quran has in the religious doctrine, teaching Quran must be to everyone's attention so that the requirements for achieving the goals of this course is provided. Hence, among the various courses being held during the educational year, the course of Quran is of special importance. Thus it may be for the same importance that there has been done many research on programs on teaching Quran and their current position in the schools of the country. This study, intends to make a review of the preceding studies related to programs on teaching Quran focusing on elementary level and identify and analyze the existing gaps in these researches. In order to achieve this objective, library studies is used. Therefore, first a review of studies on programs on teaching Quran focusing on elementary level was made. After a primary review on these researches, the areas discussed and the areas not discussed (gaps) were identified, extracted and categorized including three aspects as follows: objectives of teaching Quran, research method and statistical population. Based on findings of this study, it seems that in the previous researches, there has been put more emphasis on reciting and reading as the objectives of programs on teaching Quran in elementary level and objectives like meaning comprehension and lifestyle are considered secondary. Many of the previous studies are done with quantitative methods and a few are implemented using qualitative research method, particularly the combined method (quantitative-qualitative). Moreover, in the previous research the role of students and teachers is highlighted in comparison to the role of parents, experts in educating and training and experts in Quranic sciences, hence most previous researches discussed in this study are conducted on the elementary level, and the first and second level of high school are considerably ignored.