Quantitative Content Analysis of Second Period of Elementary School's Textbooks (second stage) from stimulating the Students' Curiosity Viewpoint

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the degree of attention of the second stage elementary school's textbooks from the viewpoint of stimulating students' curiosity. The research method is descriptive in general and a quantitative content analysis in specially. The population consists of all textbooks of the grades 4,5 and 6 which includes 9 volumes of books. Data gathered using a researcher-made scale. To ensure the validity of the researcher-made scale, it was reviewed by 11 experts in the field of educational sciences and educational psychology. The validity of the checklist was calculated and confirmed using the CVI index (Waltz and Bausell). To ensure the scale reliability, the composite reliability coefficient was calculated (0.89) and showed that the tool has high reliability. The unit of analysis was theme and descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage as well as tables and graphs were used for data analysis. The findings of the research indicated that the content of the second stage elementary school's textbooks did not pay equal and balanced attention to the components of curiosity. More attention has been paid to the components of "independent activity" and "questioning" ; while the components of "surprising" and "freshness" were paid less attention. Another finding of this research showed that in sixth grade textbooks more attention is paid to students' curiosity than in fourth and fifth grades.