Investigating Social Policy Issues in Persian Books of Elementary Education in Iran

The present study aims atinvestigating the designinglevel of social policy issues in textbooks and determiningthe kind of cognitions these books tend to convey to students with respect to social policy. The study also answers the question of “what principles and formal approaches to social policy are there in the textbooks”. For this reason, the contents of Persian textbooks of elementary schools in Iran were analyzed to find the degree of their relationships with target groups and social institution of the family. To validate the procedure, all Persian textbooks of elementary schools, including the teacher's guide, were accurately investigated. The results show that, chapters entitled“institutions, health, scientists, and environment”have been able to deal withthe issues intended in the titles, but not successful withthe targeted social policy and the relevance and coherence of different social policy issues and their mutual influence on each other. Moreover, issues such as empathy and sympathy with the poor and assisting the oppressed are come into view under various titles in the textbooks. In general, social policy issues are introduced to students in the context of promoting individualism and personal libertyand most probably this is done with an individualistic and nonconformist approach.It seems that the preceptand doctrine of personal choice in various social issues have been presented witha formal approach to social policy. This must be taken into account that the sense of moral and spiritual values, including dos and donts, are taking effect in school textbooks.