Content Analysis of Farsi Elementary School Reading Textbooks Based on Philosophical Thought Criterions on Lippman's theory

Teaching philosophy has been proposed as an important program to train of thought in most countries in the world. The main objective of this study was to analyze the content of Persian elementary school reading books (with an emphasis on the stories) based on components of philosophical thought in the philosophy for children program. The data collection was performed by content analysis method based on a list of philosophical thinking measures including three concepts (reasoning, conceptualization and judgment) and twelve sub-components. The population consisted of reading books of first to sixth grade of Iran in 2016. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics were used. In analyzed books, a total of 578 components related to the concepts of philosophical thinking were identified. The results suggested that in the textbook under study the highest frequencies were allocated to the category of reasoning and judgment has obtained the lowest attention. Also among the textbooks under study the reading textbooks of fifth and sixth grade were more focused on the components of philosophical thinking and the lowest level was associated with the reading textbook of the first grade.