Designing an Educational Package for Developing Critical Thinking on the Basis of the Stories and Allegories of the Holy Quran

This research is intended to develop a critical thinking educational package for undergraduate courses based on the stories and allegories of the Holy Qur'an. This applied research follows descriptive-analytical method for data collection and survey method for validation of the educational package. The statistical population of the study consists of all the sources and documents related to the subject, as well as all of the specialists in the fields of education, philosophy of education, curriculum designing, and Islamic sciences in the Makazi Province in the academic year of 2016-2017. The sample is selected through objective and available sampling method in the document review section, and in the validation section, it was done on the basis of similar studies and the opinion of 20 experts. Note taking and researcher-made questionnaires were employed for data collecting. For data analysis, central and peripheral indices were used. The findings demonstrated that the designed educational package contained seven goals: 1) enhancing of questioning spirit; 2) developing responsiveness; 3) improving tolerant people who accept criticism; 4) participating in group activities; 5) enhancing the skills of self-evaluation and self-modification; 6) developing the skills of "decoding concepts" and "interpreting meaning"; and 7), rising the ability to "test ideas" and " to analyze reasoning". The main topics of the contents derived from five stories of the Great Prophets (Olulazm) and the story of the Companions of the Cave (asahb Kahf) and the eight allegories in the Holy Qur'an. The teaching and learning strategies included: "group discussion", "group inquiry", and "questioning and answering". The evaluation methods included “recording classroom observations”, “self-evaluation”, “research-based evaluation”, and “group evaluation”. Furthermore, the results indicated that the experts evaluated the designed educational package and its components as a valid and proper program. Moreover, on the basis of the findings of this research, teaching critical thinking according to the proposed educational package can be suggested for all levels for training and developing faithful, religious, smart, and knowledgeable people having philosophical minds.