Including values of citizenship into the elementary schools curriculum

In the last few decades teaching values of citizenship has become an international mental concern and has formed a new view in education. An interest in teaching values of citizenship in commensurate with the culture and beliefs specific to each society has been established due to the need of training responsible and knowledgeable persons and also because of a continuous increase in communication, emergence of different cultures, and presentation of a variety of citizenship patterns, which in case of not being relevant to the national culture, they will damage the concept and act of responsible and active citizenship. In this scenario, finding an identity and coexistence on an international scale is sometimes difficult for the adolescent. The aim of the present study is to identify the system of values of citizenship, which is to be incorporated into the curriculum by considering the culture of this country and training and teaching at the elementary level. The type of this research study is applied and in terms of methodology is a survey research. Since the participants should all be experts, the population under study consists of experts who are conversant with the issues of training, education, and curriculum design. Thirty one subjects were chosen from the population through simple random selection procedures. In order to collect the needed data, questionnaires were designed and then validated by experts. The findings indicate that based on the students’ age and grade, the values can be suggested and confirmed and then assigned to seven main categories to be taught at elementary schools. The categories are: personal identity, cultural identity, norms, religious identity, international identity, democracy, and participation. Incorporating these values into appropriate teaching methodologies for different levels, different age groups, and the intended values are identified in this study.