Review and Critique of the Textbook of Science Education in Elementary 5th Grade from the Perspective of Post-positivist Philosophy of Science with an Emphasis on the Views of Imre Lakatos

The purpose of this paper is to critique fifth grade textbook of science education in primary schools of Iran from viewpoint of Imre Lakatos. Primarily, we studied viewpoint of Lakatos and then extracted his view about science nature, nature of scientific methodologies and history of science. In the second step, we examined and criticized science education in the 5th textbook at primary level with post-positivistic criteria by use of content analysis method. Our findings indicate that science education in this textbook is in a positivistic style. It emphasizes mainly on induction; verifiability and fixe nature of science and it ignores history of science and connection between science and metaphysics. Otherwise, in the viewpoint of Lakatos, education ought to connect science to metaphysics and values. Science should be educated in historical context and stress the influence of scientist's social condition on scientific theories. Science education should notice tentative nature of science too.