Political Development in Social Sciences Textbooks: Content Analysis of the High School Texts

Political development, as an educational objective, could be achieved if certain concepts and values are dealt with in the textbooks. Chief among such concepts and values are rationality, scientific tendencies, law abiding, group work, consultation, meritocracy, future orientedness, planning, tolerance, open to dialogue, responsibility, social understanding, and equality. To see the extent to which these concepts and values are dealt with in the high school social sciences textbooks in Iran, a sample of all such books was content analyzed. The results show that there is more direct or indirect mentioning of rationality than scientific tendencies (54.2% vs. 32%). Furthermore, the emphasis on these two concepts seems to diminish as we go from 7th to 12th grade level, although the use of scientific thinking in all courses increases throughout these years. In only 11.6% of the content group work is emphasized, while law abiding in 11.3%, and responsibility in only 8.7% of the content is dealt with. Attention paid to other concepts is rather miniscule and contradicts the claimed objectives in writing textbooks.