ahmadreza nasr

This study aims at identifying major challenges in teaching research methods in the fields of education and psychology. The research followed a qualitative approach where semi-structured interviews were analyzed using a thematic analysis. Based on purposeful sampling, twenty experts who had several years of experience in teaching research methods in the fields of education and psychology were interviewed. The data were then analyzed through the thematic analysis method based on the six steps suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006), namely acquainting researcher with the data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the report. With regard to challenges of teaching research methods, three main themes have emerged from interviews: curriculum, commonplace and structural problems. The curriculum challenges include issues pertaining to the course and number of units, content and resources, teaching and evaluation. The commonplace challenges include the student and the instructor-related issues, and the structural challenges include unprecedented expansion of higher education, requirements and infrastructure.

The aim of this study is to investigate the status of faculty members in the evaluation of curricula of top universities in the country and the world in order to design a scale for evaluating the valid curriculum for faculty members. This research has a mixed method of exploratory-sequential type in the form of tool design. The statistical population consisted of four groups of curriculum development experts and faculty members from top universities, officials of study centers of top public universities, officials of the Ministry of Science and Documents of selected universities of the world. The sampling process was conducted through purposeful method and the data collection tools were a semi-organized interview, document analysis and a curriculum evaluation scale. The findings revealed that top universities around the world use the ideas from all internal and external stakeholders such as faculty members, students, alumni and employers in the curriculum evaluation process. in Iranian universities, internal and external stakeholders are limited in their ability to evaluate curricula, and faculty members are more likely to participate in the evaluation of academic curricula than other groups, depending on the context in which they are offered. Finally a scale of eight validated domains with 60 items and 6 open-ended questions is developed and presented for curriculum evaluation based on the perspectives of university faculty members.

Given that the use of the dimensions of a situation is very effective in the growth and formation of ideas, the main purpose of this study is to analyze the views of religious and educational experts, and teachers' lived experiences about the role of religious education situations in second elementary school. The approach of the present study is qualitative and phenomenological. To this end, we have used semi-structured interviews with experts and teachers. The data were analyzed using coding and categorization methods. Cognitive and emotional in situations, and the attractiveness and development of situations. Based on teachers' experiences, dimensions of the situation that should be used in the implementation of religious education curriculum are divided into eight categories: Disruptive situations of habits and natural order, stimulating situations of emotions and feelings, stimulating situations of thought and reason, collective situations and activities, informal situations, time of moral issues and challenges, occurrence of natural phenomena, places and historical monuments.

Education in any country needs qualified and capable teachers. Considering that the characteristics of teachers and the characteristics of teaching are stated in Islamic teachings the purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of teacher ethics and the characteristics of teaching from the perspective of the Qur'an and hadiths.

The research was descriptive and conducted using library method. In order to collect the data, verses and narrations related to the subject were identified and examined; then the data were collected and analyzed using note-taking.

 

Findings showed that in the verses of the Quran and hadiths, moral characteristics are expressed for teachers. These characteristics are: tolerance, justice, humility, honesty, harmony of speech with action and generosity. The verses of the Qur'an and hadiths also pay attention to the teaching characteristics of teachers. These characteristics are: scientific competence, practical training, speech to the extent understood by the listeners, rhetoric in expression and speech. These characteristics enable the teacher to perform his / her educational duties better, to be more successful in creating scientific and practical skills, and to prepare people for a healthy and desirable society.

The purpose of this study was to identify and evaluate teaching methods and evaluate the academic achievement of civil engineering students in one of the comprehensive universities in Iran. This was an exploratory sequential mixed methods research study, implementing phenomenological and survey designs correspondingly in the qualitative and quantitative phases. Data was collected in the qualitative part through semi-structured interviews and via a researcher-made questionnaire in the quantitative phase. The statistical population in the qualitative phase encompassed the faculty members of the civil engineering department of the given university and the statistical population of the quantitative part involved the third and fourth year undergraduate civil engineering students of the stated department (N =80). To study the issue in depth, all the faculty members were involved in the interview; however, the sample size in the survey study was determined based on Krejcie and Morgan’s table (N = 68). The interview data was analyzed through categorization and the data obtained from the survey was analyzed using SPSS software program. Based on the findings, the faculty members believed that teaching methods in civil engineering should have the following features: a) emphasis on practical learning; b) providing learning opportunities in real environments; and c) strengthening engineering vision. Regarding evaluation, the faculty members emphasized that evaluation in civil engineering should make use of diverse, continuous and functional methods. On the other hand, the civil engineering students contended that the majority of the courses are offered in the form of planned presentations and little heed is given to the use of novel and practical teaching methods. They believed although their assignments, and projects are considered in the final evaluation, the instrutors rarely engage them in authentic practical activities or ask for their preferred assessment practices. Therefore, it can be concluded that there is a gap between the favorable teaching and assessment activities the instructors described and what the students believed the instructors do in practice

The purpose of this study is to identify the advantages and disadvantages of individual and group approaches in guiding the doctoral dissertation and compare it between students of the three departments of humanities, engineering and basic sciences of the University of Isfahan. The research approach is a combination of successive exploratory types. In the qualitative section, using semi-structured interviews with 27 managers, deputies and faculty members, data were collected by sampling method. Findings were used to identify the advantages and disadvantages of experts and to build quantitative tools. In the quantitative part, a researcher-made questionnaire was administered among doctoral students in three groups of humanities, technical and engineering and basic sciences by field random sampling method. Qualitative findings showed that in general, experts believe that both approaches have advantages and disadvantages that are used according to the nature of the field and the desired position of each, but according to the scientific situation in today's world, group approaches are more important. Took. The results in the quantitative section showed that students agreed more with the advantages of the group approach and considered its disadvantages far less than the advantages. The results of post hoc tests indicate the differences between the basic and technical sciences and engineering groups with the humanities regarding some of the disadvantages and advantages of the approaches. In the humanities departments, due to the more individual nature of the research, students had little knowledge of group approaches and did not pay much attention to it

Improving the curriculum of academic disciplines requires to consider the perspectives and needs of the curriculum constituencies. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of graduates in evaluating the curricula of the top universities in Iran and the world in order to design a specific curriculum evaluation scale for graduates. A mixed sequential -exploratory research in the form of instrument design was chosen for this study. Statistical population consisted of six groups. The first group included faculty members and curriculum experts at top universities, the second group was officials of educational planning centers at top universities and the third group was relevant officials in the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology from which a total of 30 people were interviewed. The fourth group consisted of the worldchr('39')s selected universities, the fifth group included masterchr('39')s degree program instructors in some humanities disciplines at top universities, and the sixth group consisted of 30 employed graduates. Data collection tool was semi-structured interview, documents analysis, and specific graduate- researcher-made scale. The validity of the interview questions was content-based that used the opinions of ten academic experts. The reliability of the interview data was done through re-implementation of the interviews and the use of peer group as well as the validity of the graduate scale in terms of contents and validation using Lawshe coefficient. The internal correlation of variables was estimated through Cronbachchr('39')s alpha. The findings showed that the worldchr('39')s leading universities use the views of all constituencies such as faculty members, students, graduates and employers to improve and revise curricula. In comparison, in Iranian universities, graduates, except in exceptional cases, do not participate much in the evaluation of curricula, and even experts consider the importance and necessity of graduate participation lower than other constituencies. Using the obtained data, a scale with 62 phrases and 7 open-ended questions was developed to evaluate the curriculum from the perspective of graduates.

The aim of this paper is to study the relationship between algebra content formation in mathematics textbooks and the mathematics teachers’ current knowledge. Based on this aim, we have considered three subjects: 1. mathematics teachers’ current knowledge of algebra, 2. the beginning and presentation methods of algebra content on the number of selected previous textbooks and 3.the role of previous textbooks content in teacher knowledge forming. Research Methodology had been a survey, content analysis, and historical and documentary analysis. This study showed that the teacherschr('39') knowledge and teaching methods do not coincide with the algebra content of the current seventh-grade mathematics textbook, and about 30% of teachers’ knowledge is based on the experiences of the previous textbooks.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the desirable methods of evaluation of undergraduate law & psychology internship. This study adopted a mixed approach. In the qualitative section, interviews were conducted with 53 experts, faculty members from the University of Isfahan, lawyers, psychologists and graduate students who were selected using a purposive random sampling method. The statistical population of the quantitative section of this study was a small number of 5th-7th grade students and graduates of 2014-2017 in law and psychology, 264 of them were selected by stratified random sampling method. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and researcher-made questionnaires. Content validity was used to determine the validity of the interview and the questionnaire. Reliability of the questionnaire was calculated by Cronbach's alpha coefficient and 85% were reported. In this research, the categorization method for qualitative analysis and inferential statistics tests; Kolmogorov-Smirnov, single sample t, t two independent samples, Friedman and multivariate analysis of variance for quantitative analysis are used. The results of the study showed to assess internship in the field of law, examine student performance in simulated situations and in the field of psychology examining the students' practical and diagnostic ability to address the clients' problems should be highly focused. The participants in the interview also emphasized the assessment by the professor based on the portfolio in real situations of law students and reviewing sample work in objective situations and providing written reports by students of the field of psychology.

This study aims to designing and validation of internship curriculum pattern based on collaborative autobiography in Teacher Education in Iran. In this research, it has been attempted to first analyze the specialized texts related to the subject, in order to extract the Foundations of collaborative Autobiography, and subsequently the implications of curriculum elements of this kind of internship.In the second step, a researcher-made questionnaire was developed and in order to validate the proposed model, the views of the teachers of the curriculum and the instructors of the internship courses at Farhangian University were used. According to the findings, the desirable implementation of the internship curriculum requires collaborative and multidimensional collaborative and multidisciplinary activities among the students of science, teachers and teachers, and what makes this sense meaning the narratives and life experiences that can be linked to the goals Courses are internships and courses.

With the purpose of identifying and prioritizing the goals and activities appropriate for internship for Undergraduatestudents of psychology, a mixed approach has been adopted in this study. In the qualitative section, interviews were conducted with 28 experts, faculty members, psychologists and graduate students who were selected using a purposive random sampling method. The statistical population of the quantitative section of this study was 5th-8th grade students in 1396-1397 and graduates of 1393-1396 in psychology, 150 of which were selected by stratified random sampling method. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. Content validity was used to determine the validity of the interview and the questionnaire, and to determine the reliability of the questionnaire, Cranach's alpha coefficient was used. The results showed that in terms of internship goals, the highest priority should be given to linking academic theoretical issues with the workplace. Regarding learning activities, communicating with clients and identifying the type of services they need were proposed as the most important activities. Participants in the interview also emphasized the promotion of theoretical knowledge as the most important goals. Regarding learning activities suitable for internship, they focused‎ on the specialized activities.

The present study aims at exploring the reason for entering voluntarily into the teaching profession as well as representation of its nature in the context of life-world and from the viewpoint of student-teacher. To achieve this goal, we used the method of participatory autobiography, and the MAXQDA software for analysis of qualitative data to analyze the autobiographies. According to the results, we may classify the students’ motivation for entering the teaching profession in four types as follows:  “choosing a certain lifestyle”, “occupational privileges”, “encouraging one’s associates”, and “social function”. Similarly, the findings show that the nature of being a teacher is composed of four concepts of “love”, “teaching”, “educating”, and the “art of establishing relationship”. These findings show that recognizing the nature of being a teacher in the eyes of the volunteers and restudying the reasons and factors effective in entering the teaching profession must be considered and investigated by those responsible for education system.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which psychological principles were observed in the second primary school textbook for female teachers. This research was conducted using descriptive-survey method. The statistical population consisted of all female teachers in the second elementary school in Isfahan and Tehran, totaling 650 people, 260 in Isfahan and 390 in Isfahan regions of Tehran, and based on multi-class cluster sampling in Isfahan Regions 2, 3 and in Tehran, regions 6, 7, 10 and 11 were selected for research. The sample size was 86 in Isfahan and 97 in Tehran. Required data were collected through a researcher-made questionnaire. The validity of this questionnaire was determined by its content validity and its reliability was 0.837, using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. For analyzing the data, descriptive and inferential statistics were used using Spss20 software. According to the findings, the highest average value was related to content matching with student's age with an average of 2.50 and the lowest average value related to the pre-organizer statement at the beginning of each chapter with an average of 2.77 and proportion of content to enhance creativity and innovation. Students with an average of 2.16 Also, the mean of the total population was 2.33 and was significant at the error level of 0.05. Therefore, given the high mean of the sample mean of 2.52 and the significance of the tests, we can conclude The psychological criteria in the Farsi II Secondary Book are considered to be high.

Researchers have shown that there is a significant relationship between preschool teachers literacy and education that they offer. In recent years, we have seen an increase in educators’ information literacy. The present study aims to investigate curriculum elements on technology education of preschool teachers. This research was quantitative and descriptive methods were used. Statistical society includes preschool teachers of Fars. Data was collected by a researcher made questionnaire with cronbach’s alpha (0/94) coefficient. Friedman’s test result showed that according to view point of teachers on purpose of technology education, familiarity with the newest resources for preschool education. On content of technology education, familiarity with various and informative games. On learning- teaching approaches of technology education, invite specialist person to train and on evaluate of technology education, functional tests in terms of importance are very important from the perspective of preschool teachers. Also, this point is worth mentioning that all the items in the questionnaire are of great importance, because the average of all items is higher than the assumed average (4).

The aim of this study wasstudents and professors’ satisfaction rate of the assessment strategies of learning results in graduate curricula in University of Isfahan. The study population consisted of all graduate students and professors who teach at graduate level in the University of Isfahan. In accordance with Cochran formula, 177 professors, 61 Ph.D. students and 254 master's students were chosen for stratified by random sampling. Instrument used in this study, was a questionnaire on Likert scale whose content validity was approved by professors and experts in the field. To estimate its reliability Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used, and the amount of 80/0 which was obtained. The collected data were calculated using SPSS statistical software and were analyzed in descriptive and inferential statistics level. The results showed that teachers and students do not consent of educational assessment strategies. According to the results, the satisfaction of the professors and postgraduate students was lower of doctoral students

The present study aims at identifying and analyzing the dimensions and components of spiritual curriculum based the related resources and textbooks. The research method is descriptive and of practical type, and includes content analysis as documentary analysis. Analytical population consists of sources and textbooks relevant to spiritual curriculum available, among which 40 domestic and 30 foreign sources were identified and analyzed. The data were collected using the inventory (checklist) of dimensions and components of spiritual curriculum.
The measurement tools included forms for taking notes and the researcher-made content analysis inventory. The research findings indicate that based on the resources and textbooks, the analyzed curriculum with emphasis on the spiritual aspects of epistemology and value comprised four aspects namely the art and aesthetics, wisdom, ethics and spirit. And each of these four aspects is composed of components: the art and aesthetics with 14 components, the ethical dimension with 12 components; the spirit dimension with 11 components; the wisdom dimension with 9 components respectively received the highest to lowest attention. In the art and aesthetics, the component of expressing perceptions: feelings and ideas with 32 frequency, and mastery with 5 frequencies; in the ethical dimension: responsibility taking and equality and justice with 10 frequencies and modesty with 4 frequencies; in the dimension of spirit: faith in God and love each component with 10 frequencies and presence and poetry, each with 5 frequencies; in the dimension of wisdom, communicating with the universe with 8 frequencies and trying to control the self with 2 frequencies have received the highest to lowest degrees of attention respectively.

Competences were a series of key professional and personal skill, which was crucial for the successful actives of the profession. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine professional competencies of university teacher in order to develop conceptual framework professional competencies of university teacher. The participants of the study consisted of 26 faculty members from the University of Isfahan at the academic year of 2017-2018, who were selected via the targeted sampling method. Sample selection continued until theoretical saturation. Data were collected via the semi-structured interviewing technique. For data analysis, interpretive analysis method has been used. The results of this paper indicate that five key competences of faculty include, general, educational, research, specialist competence, and Professional ethics. General competences include psychological, individual and attitudinal characteristics. Educational competences include teaching skills, management of classroom, implying the principles of pedagogy and identifying audiences,specialist competence include mastery in dimensions of specialized knowledge, research competences include performance of research, production and dissemination of scientific works and professional ethics includes communicational skills, professional ethics in education, professional ethics in research, and commitment to students.

Purpose of this research was comparative study the process of reviewing the curricula in various countries and Iran. for the purpose, was selected 6 Universities of the 5 America, Australia, Canada, China and Turkey countries for comparison with the University of Isfahan in Iran by targeted sampling method. The study, by George Brady was performed four-stage comparison process into four stages: describe, interpret, neighborhood and comparison. Campus tool of collecting of data, was check list of data sources in relation to primary curriculum review process was different universities at databases was available on each campus. After collecting and Classification information in different tables, interpreted and analyzed. The results showed that the process of reviewing the various universities have similarities and differences in terms of review levels,work process, and members component. also results indicate that the some of universities had novel aspects in reviewing the academic curricula. These aspects were: attention to personal and professional education of students, and presence of students, experts and specialists outside of the university, and the representative of the library in the review board.

Abstract: The main objective of this study was to investigate the viewpoints of graduate students towards strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats underlying the innovation-based approach to arts curricula in higher education. This descriptive survey made use of semi-structured interviews and researcher-made questionnaires in order to collect the required data. The validity of interviews and questionnaires was confirmed by obtaining experts’ opinions and their reliability was determined using Cronbach's alpha coefficient (0.90). The statistical population was composed of all graduate students at Art University of Isfahan. Then, the stratified random sampling (quantitative) was used in terms of sampling method and the actual process of sampling was undertaken in the format of purposeful sampling method (qualitative). The results indicated that the item “paying attention to lifelong learning in order to keep students up to date” was the most important strength point and the item “inappropriate facilities” was the most important weak point. Besides, it was indicated that the items of “fostering a culture of innovation” and “lack of new and up-to-date knowledge and technology in the country” were the most notable opportunity and threat, respectively.

Despite emphasis of the high-level educational document on training and promotion of the fundamental qualifications to deepen common and professional identity of teachers in individual, humane, Islamic and Iranian aspects, still we lack a suitable model for training the teachers. Also lack of a comprehensive framework of qualifications of teachers in the curriculum of teacher’s training has caused disorder and ambiguity in the method of training and raising human resources in educational organizations. The main objective of this paper is to study the approach to raising qualified teachers on the basis of the educational development document of Islamic Republic of Iran to offer a suitable model. Qualitative analysis was used based on strategy of grounded theory to precisely study the text of the development document (more than 544 pages). Then, 148 statements marking the factors and conditions that prepare the grounds for qualified teachers were extracted and categorized.
The results of the research are presented in three stages of open, axial and selective coding within the framework of a theoretical model, focusing on the main category (qualifications of teachers), causal conditions (goal setting and curriculum), contextual conditions (public and private institutions, organizations and departments contributing to the issue of official and public education), intermediate conditions (individual and social traits and organizational factors), strategies (professional planning and development) and consequences (total monotheistic identity). The findings of this paper can be used as a conceptual framework for planning and preparation of a curriculum for teacher’s training based on teachers’ qualifications.

Providing and categorizing a set of information for achieving a framework for narrative research in educational and training experiences is the purpose of this research study. The complexities of educational experiences are rarely discussed in researches, the narrative research as a method of qualitative research makes it possible to understand these complexities and to approach theoretical and practical problems in education. Learning from the experiences and transferring them to others is essential in education, which makes it necessary to operate research base study, action research and narrative research. In the research narrative, people express their experiences of the phenomenon under study, and the researcher constructs the meanings of anecdote. Given the importance and necessity of narrative in education, this paper seeks to study the narrative study through an interpretative study to discuss about to the role of narrative study in education, and provides a framework for conducting a narrative research in education by providing two examples of narrative studies.

The purpose of this study was to investigate viewpoints of experts and teachers about individual characteristics and specialized capabilities of the preschool teachers. This research is descriptive-analytic that two qualitative and quantitative methods are used to conduct it. The population of qualitative phase includes faculty members of universities, PhD students, masters teachers in fields of Psychology, Curriculum and Instruction. The population of quantitative phase includes educators in Fars and Isfahan provinces in academic year 2016. Sampling method in the qualitative section was purposive and snowball and in quantitative section, 566 teachers have been selected randomly. Information was collected by the semi-structured interview and researcher-made questionnaire. Qualitative findings were categorized based on content analysis and quantitative findings are analyzed by the inferential and descriptive statistics. After performing preliminary study and analyzing the questionnaires, it was determined that reliability of individual characteristics was 86% and that of the specialized capabilities was 87% as well. Results of the Friedman’s test showed that according to viewpoint of teachers about the individual specifications, mental and personal health is very important, among specialized capabilities of the teachers, ability to manage the class is at top of related items in terms of importance.

The examination of the issues facing higher education showsthat universities are confrontingserious challenges in the third millennium. The present study was conducted with the aim of identifying the challenges of the curriculum higher education in the recent decades and the potential strategies and solutions. This study was conducted within a qualitative framework and through research synthesis. The inclusion criteria for this study was relevance with the purpose of researchandthe publication of the research in the recent decades (2004 to 2015) .To provide the required information, the worksheetform was used and Cohen's kappa coefficient was used in orderto ensure the reliability, and open and axial coding methods from Software Nvivo-8 wasemployed for the data analysis phase. The results showed that the curriculum development in higher education system was faced with 13 major challenges in the recent decades, including: internationalizationof thecurriculum, curriculumbased learning community, evaluation of curricula, neglecting ethnic and multicultural policies, quality of teaching, curriculum validation, globalization, curriculum decentralized, growth types of thinking, learning how to learn and teaching-learning strategies challenges content,interdisciplinary curriculum,and using information technology in the curriculum. The potential solutions and strategies to address these challenges are discussed.

Foreign students encounter educational problems which make studying in the host country difficult. Given the importance of the educational problems of foreign students, and identifying the factors which alleviate these problems, this study examined the educational problems of international students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Iran.
This was a quantitative-qualitative study with a descriptive-analytical design. In the qualitative section, interviews were conducted with 14 foreign students, and in the quantitative section, 56 students were selected through random sampling proportional to sample size. Semi-structured interviews and a researcher-made questionnaire were used to collect information. Data analysis was conducted using categorization methods, descriptive statistics, univariate t-test, ANOVA, post hoc test, and multiple regression in SPSS software.
In the qualitative section, the foreign students’ educational problems included weakness in understanding Persian, different educational system, the professors’ inappropriate teaching method, and dissatisfaction with textbooks. In the quantitative section, the educational problems were not significant at a 0.05 level. Moreover, the student's problems in terms of culture and the length of stay in Iran showed significant differences.
The results of predictor factors of educational problems revealed that cultural dissimilarity and short presence in Iran are the main predictor factors. Therefore, in order to motivate learning in foreign students, and thereby, decrease their educational problems, it is necessary to familiarize them with Iranian customs and hold classes to introduce them to the Iranian educational system.