Astronomical Content Analysis in Elementary and First High School Books

Since there is no astronomy course in the Iranian public education system, the question arises as to what content of astronomy and with what structure is presented in the textbooks? To investigate this issue, content analysis method has been used and all textbooks of elementary and junior high schools have been examined by census method. Texts have been described and analyzed by Merrill study method, images by emphasis method method and also the relationship between text and image by communication method. The results show that the content of astronomy is organized and distributed in a multidisciplinary manner among elementary and junior high school courses, with the share of experimental science courses being 45.4% and the share of social studies being 26.8%. Although most of the content of astronomy is presented theoretically in textbooks, in the meantime, in the course of experimental sciences and in the ninth grade, more emphasis has been placed on the method of work. In the elementary school, the image was used almost twice as much as in the secondary school, and in 38.2% of the pictures, the emphasis technique was used.