The position of source criticism in the history books of SAMT institute: a suggestion

The components of the higher education system can be divided into learner, teacher, educational structures and content.Meanwhile, university textbooks have a special place in education due to their role as an intermediary between professors and students. Considering the importance of textbooks in the transfer of knowledge in all its components this article, using the content analysis method, analyzes academic textbooks in the field of history in terms of their attention to the criticism of sources according to the methodology of historical criticism of sources. Since the SAMT organization is in charge of composing and publishing university textbooks in Iran, the books published by this organization were examined as university textbook resources in the field of history. The results show that among the 38 book titles related to the curriculum, only in 10 book titles, a chapter or a section has been used to introduce and criticize historical sources. Among the books and pages that introduced and criticized the sources, only two books entered the topic of source criticism and the rest were only limited to the introduction of sources.For this, it seems that in the history textbooks, not much attention has been paid to the criticism of sources, and this can have a negative effect on the students' critical thinking skills and active and questioning approach to historical sources. Therefore, it is suggested that in writing history textbooks, a chapter should be allocated for the criticism of sources based on historical criticism, along with the criticism of some historical narratives.