Legal Literacy Education Curriculum In Secondary Schooling System of Islamic Republic of Iran

legal education and legal literacy are practical solutions for strengthening the foundation of social life. The administration of justice and balance of interest would be easier if the people know about their rights and daties. There fore an increasing in legal literacy my lead to government development and consolidations . a government which is transparent and accountable and finally there would be rule of law in society.

 What kind of secondary school curriculum for legal literacy has been developed in the Islamic Republic of Iran?
Quantities questions
-          How appropriate is the developed curriculum?
-          How balanced the developed curriculum is?
-          How homogenous is the developed curriculum?
 

This  study used a mixed-methods approach to research in general and a multi-step sequential exploration of growing Bayesian classification model in particular. The qualitative phase was done through the use of the case study research method and the quantitative phase was done using a descriptive survey. Snowball sampling technique was used to interview participants in the qualitative phase of the study, i.e. Faculty members in the Schools of Education and Psychology, and Law and Political Sciences, as well as faculty members in the Faculty of Economics, Management and Social Sciences who were who work in Secondary School Textbook Compilation Office of the Ministry of Education, Iran. Then, based on the findings of the first phase, a scale was designed for the evaluation of the developed curriculum and distributed among participants in the quantitative phase of study who were 97 teachers of Social Sciences in Shiraz city, Fars Province, Iran, from among teachers selected through the use of Krejcie and Morgan's table and based on stratified random sampling.

Based on the findings, a framework was established for legal l literacy training curriculum of secondary school. The framework included nine elements and the curriculum was designed in five chapters.

The extracted basic themes in the framework for legal literacy training curriculum, consisting of 9 elements were considered as the first level organizational themes.  The elements which were formed based on merging and summarizing of all the 196 basic themes extracted from research interviews were aims, content , learning and teaching strategies, educational aid materials and resources, learner activity , training time, training space, grouping, and assessment. Examination of the first level organizational themes showed that they all have the same basis which should be considered in developing a selective legal literacy curriculum theme. The structure of each of the elements of the legal literacy education curriculum can reveal the requirements which need to be satisfied and the necessary arrangements which need to be made for  being an element of the relevant curriculum. The focus of each of the elements of this type of curriculum can further reveal the desired outcome of each of the constituent elements. Indeed, legal education for learners entails designing of a curriculum which tries to explain legal literacy to individuals and making them aware of current legal problems. This way, individuals will be empowered  to deal with different social harms. From the perspective of legal experts, the focus of legal education should be on increasing individuals’ legal capacity,  awareness, and  knowledge, and thus on reducing the number of cases in the judiciary. Two other elements which should be considered in developing a legal literacy curriculum are content formation and course titles. The content of a legal literacy curriculum should represent different aspects of business law, civil law, constitutional law, and criminal law. It should also encourages the relevant processes for increasing creativity in learners through the provision of the necessary flexibility in their motivation. Another element which should be considered in the development of any legal literacy curriculum is the use of relevant educational materials. Experts believe that relevant educational materials can help develop thinking, strengthen attention, arouse interest, and increase the learning speed and provide real-life  experiences. They also recommend the use of different educational materials and further believe that in collecting educational materials on legal literacy education, authors need to focus on the audio-visual, written and educational resources. Considering visual resources, educational videos and pictures and electronic contents should be used. Concerning educational materials, experts believe that books, magazines, brochures and legal form samples should be benefitted from. And concerning educational resources, specialists can be invited, simulations can be run and scientific visits can be made. Finally, one other element which should be considered in development of any legal literacy curriculum as the adoption of efficient teaching-learning methods. The focus should be on developing practical teaching-learning methods I and objective, interactive, transitional and exploratory methods should be followed. Overall, the development of a legal literacy curriculum can be in compatible with different types of evaluation, such as product-based evaluation, process-oriented evaluation, and integrated evaluation and with various types of methods such as written, oral, virtual, sample, functional, descriptive In conclusion, acquiring legal literacy can keep individuals from social harms, and thus should be considered as a necessity in every individual’s life.