Analyzing the content of elementary school textbooks to identify the components of national identity based on Upstream documents documents

The purpose of the current research is to identify the components of national identity in primary school textbooks with an emphasis on the document of the fundamental transformation of education and the document of the national curriculum. Considering the important role of education institution and curriculum in strengthening the national identity of students, the research problem is to know the components of national identity in the upstream documents of education and primary school textbooks.

In this research, thematic analysis method was used to analyze the text of the upstream documents and textbooks. The sample examined in this study includes social studies textbooks and heavenly gifts. These books have been chosen because they are the most capable of carrying the concepts of national identity. The unit of analysis (recording) in this research is the theme, image, map, and the unit of context is textbooks. In this research, 150 concepts, 30 subcategories and 9 categories were extracted from the text of textbooks. To determine the validity of the qualitative content analysis method with an inductive approach (theme analysis) in the current research, the books and upstream documents were reviewed in two stages, one after 10 to 50% of the categorizations were completed and the second time at the end of the work.

According The results of the research, The most important components that were identified in the books of the second year of elementary school (for social studies and heavenly gifts, respectively) for national identity are: introduction of different cultures, history and identity of ethnic groups, introduction of cultural heritage; Introducing celebrities, reflecting the style of coverage of ethnic groups and regions; Languages of Iranian ethnic groups in textbooks, religious and religious pluralism, religious and religious pluralism, introduction of celebrations and holidays and religious rituals of all ethnic groups and regions. Based on the results of this research, planners can make policies based on elements of national identity and provide appropriate content in Textbooks should strengthen national identity in primary school students and make them feel belonging to the homeland.