Analysis of the status of teaching gratitude in primary school Fārsi textbooks according to Shannon's Entropy technique

The present study was conducted as a query on the themes of the primary school sixth-grade Farsi textbooks according to the components of teaching gratitude. It was an applied research in terms of purpose and mixed-methods in terms of method with content analysis design. The research population of the study included all the texts, poems, stories, pictures, and activities in the primary school Farsi textbooks (721 pages in sum), edition 2020. The research instruments included the primary school Farsi textbooks, Adler & Fagley’s (2005) eight components of teaching gratitude, and the categories extracted from the components of teaching gratitude which were identified according to Mayring comparative content analysis. Experts verified the identified categories after several validity checking. Also, the reliability of the categories was calculated at 82% using the Scott coefficient. Data was analyzed via the Shannon Entropy Method. According to the findings, 1265 themes were identified in primary school Farsi textbooks. The highest frequency was related to the component of focusing on the possessions and the lowest frequency was related to the component of suffering/loss. Moreover, according to the results of Shannon’s entropy analysis of the importance coefficient, the components of teaching gratitude were in the following order from the highest to the lowest degree of attention: religious ceremonies, appreciation, focus on the possessions, astonishment, comparison (social comparison, self-comparison), present moment, suffering/loss and interpersonal. The results showed that the components of gratitude and their categories haven’t been paid attention to, appropriately in Farsi textbooks.