The Emphasis on the Concept of Social Capital and Its Components in Elementary School Textbooks

Social capital is an important concept and needs to be dealt with from early years of schooling. To see the extent to which the elementary school textbooks in Iran actually deal with this concept and/or its components, a number of textbooks were randomly selected and their content analyzed. The unit of analysis, however, has been the paragraph. From among 1797 paragraphs analyzed 38.7% contained elements/signifiers of social capital. Among all the components of the concept, norms were emphasized with the highest relative frequency (43%); socio-cultural values came in second with 33.3% relative frequency. The least frequently mentioned components of social capital observed are the quality of relations and interactions among members with only 4.1%, and cooperation with 8.4% relative frequency. Trust and worthiness of trust was only sighted in 11.2% of the relevant paragraphs. Among the textbooks, fifth grade's Civics book with 64.8%, and Reading Farsi with 20.7% relative frequency have the highest and lowest number of reference to social capital.