Investigating Mastery of Female Senior Elementary Students over Science and Mathematics: A Contemplation on the Selection of Curriculum Content in terms of Learnability Criteria

In this research we investigated female elementary students’ level of mastery over science and mathematics content and explained the nature of relationship between students’ level of mastery and learnability of content in science and mathematics. 914 female students of public senior elementary schools in Kashan were recruited. The needed data for fourth and fifth graders were gathered through researcher-made tests; the data related to sixth graders were gathered through standard exams taken from the students of this grade in the end of semester. Content validity of tests was verified by connoisseur teachers in each grade and was confirmed by structural equation modelling. For explaining the quantitative findings, we implemented 9 interviews with experienced and expert teachers which were selected through purposeful sampling method. The main analysis revealed that students learning is significantly lower than the mastery level in almost half of the science syllabus and all of the mathematics syllabus.