نشریه تفکر و کودک
سال دوازدهم شماره 2 (پاییز و زمستان 1400)

One of the duties of the formal and informal education system in the elementary school is to teach ethics to children because they have a pure heart and are ready to acquire virtues. In this regard, the present study was conducted to identify the aims of teaching moral concepts to children in the second grade of elementary school (aged 10 to 12 years) based on the views of Ayatollah Javadi Amoli. The research method was analytical-inferential. The results showed that closeness to God is the ultimate goal, and factors such as self-knowledge, cultivating God-seeking and godliness, thinking about moral issues, taking responsibility, increasing the patience level, success in honoring, respecting and loving human beings, and improving the sense of aesthetics are among the mediating aims of teaching moral concepts to children, which can be identified from the perspective of Ayatollah Javadi Amoli. Achieving these aims in the second grade of elementary school promises a creative and believing entry into adolescence, which, if accompanied with a coherent planning, can be effective in forming a lasting moral identity as desired by Islam.

The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of teaching self-monitoring strategies of attention on phonological awareness and attention functions of dyslexic students. The research method was applied in terms of purpose, and the research design was quasi-experimental of the pretest-posttest type with a control group. The statistical population of the present study included all male elementary school students in the city of Tabriz who were introduced to the Center for Learning Disabilities in Tabriz in the academic year of 2020-2021 for having reading and dyslexia learning disorders. The statistical sample of this study consisted of 30 students who referred to the Center for Learning Disabilities in Tabriz. Students were selected by convenience sampling method and, after obtaining parental consent, participated in this study and were randomly assigned to two experimental (15 people) and control (15 people) groups. To collect data, Soleimani and Dastjerdi’s phonological awareness tests, Razold’s attention functions and Wechsler’s intelligence test were used. Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance. The results showed that self-monitoring strategies of attention have an effect on students’ attention functions and phonological awareness. In fact, teaching self-monitoring strategies increases attention functions and phonological awareness. Thus, teaching self-monitoring strategies plays an important role in improving the reading skills of dyslexic students.

Philosophy for children is a trend whose most common approach is that of Matthew Lipman, which focuses on increasing logical thinking skills. Lipman’s thought is more comprehensible in analytic philosophy, but restricting this program to the growth of rational reasoning and thinking alone is not compatible with Heidegger’s view of philosophical hermeneutics, which places philosophy on a hermeneutic basis. Heidegger aimed to open a new way in philosophy based on efforts to understand the meaning of existence through hermeneutics. That being said, how can a hermeneutic reading of a P4C program be presented in the light of Heidegger’s thoughts? The present study attempts to examine and analyze the P4C program from the perspective of Heidegger’s philosophical hermeneutics in terms of “understanding” and “thinking” as the two main components of this program. To achieve this goal, the analytical-inferential research method has been utilized. Based on the theoretical foundations of Heidegger’s philosophical hermeneutics, a model was proposed that indicates how understanding and thinking occur in this program. The results of this study show that under Heidegger’s views, theorizing, researching and planning for the P4C program will have an ontological, thought-oriented and questioning nature.

The present study aimed to predict the types of bullying based on the subscales of moral disengagement and moral identity in elementary school students. For this purpose, out of all male and female elementary school students in Tehran, 420 students were selected by cluster and simple random sampling methods, which included 203 male and 217 female students, 240 in the fifth and 180 in the sixth grade. Participants in the study answered the three questionnaires of bullying (Thornberg and Jangert, 2014), moral disengagement (Thornberg and Jangert, 2014), and moral identity (Aquino and Reed, 2003). Data were analyzed using the regression method and with the help of SPSS22 software. Considering the significance of the findings and the standardization of other indicators studied, both research hypotheses were confirmed and it was shown that the subscales of moral disengagement and moral identity both have a significant effect on predicting student bullying (α ≥ 0.05). Therefore, it can be concluded that according to the concept of moral agency, to examine the bullying of students, we can pay attention to the degree of their moral disengagement and moral identity; that is, bullying has a positive relationship with moral disengagement and a negative relationship with moral identity.

The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of mind games on the executive functions of preschool children. The research method was experimental with a pretest-posttest control group design. The statistical population included all girls and boys in preschool centers of District 1 of Sanandaj in the school year 2018-2019, from which two preschool centers were randomly selected and 20 individuals were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. To collect the data, the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (teacher form) (Gioia, Isquith, Guy and Kenworthy, 2000), and to analyze the data, univariate and multivariate analysis of covariance were used. The results showed that the teaching of mind games had an effect on the executive functions of preschool children and those children who had been taught mind games had improved their executive functions. Results also showed that training in mind games was effective only in two dimensions of attention transfer and working memory (P < 0.05) and there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups in other dimensions of executive functions (P < 0.05). Based on these results, mind games can be formally used in the educational program of kindergartens.

The purpose of this study was to identify the effectiveness of teaching a seven-step learning cycle model on improving creative thinking skills and problem solving in elementary students. The study was experimental and had a pretest-posttest control group design. The statistical population of the study included all female students in the sixth grade of elementary school in Dehgolan city in the academic year 2019-2020. According to the type of research, the statistical sample consisted of two classes of 20 people who were selected by convenience sampling method. The experimental group received training (a seven-step learning cycle model) and the control group did not receive any training in this regard. To collect data, Torrance’s (1981) Creative Thinking Questionnaire and Hepner and Petersen’s (1982) Problem Solving Questionnaire were used. Data analysis was performed by statistical method of analysis of covariance. The results showed that training based on a seven-step learning cycle model significantly increased creative thinking skills: fluidity (P ≤ 0.001), initiative (P ≤ 0,000), flexibility (P ≤ 0,000), and extension (P ≤ 0.034); and problem solving: confidence in problem solving (P ≤ 0.002), desire-avoidance style (P ≤ 0.006), and personal control (P ≤ 0.040) in the post-test stage. In fact, teaching with a seven-step learning cycle model has increased the mentioned variables in the target community.

The purpose of this paper is to study the ontological foundations of Merleau-Ponty’s and Lipman’s approaches in order to develop an integrated model in the Philosophy for Children program. The main research questions are: what are the ontological foundations of Merleau-Ponty’s and Lipman’s approaches and, on this basis, what is the integrated model of the two approaches in the philosophy for children program? In this paper, in identifying the ontological foundations, the analytical-inferential research method has been used, and in presenting the integrated model, the integration composition research method has been used. The results indicate similarities and differences between the Merleau-Ponty’s and Lipman’s approaches. Given the basic commonalities in the ontological foundations and the emphasis on the importance of childhood and its impact on adulthood in the two approaches, by eliminating disparate elements and overlapping commonalities through necessary corrections, a combination of the two approaches can be used to improve the philosophy for children program.

According to the intellectuals in the Philosophy for Children program, philosophical thinking skill is an educational skill that provides children and adolescents with thinking under controlled conditions, and storytelling is a multifaceted tool that can indirectly develop a child’s cognitive, emotional, and social abilities. The present study examined the sufficiency and frequency of creative, caring, and critical philosophical thought types in children’s stories for age groups A, B, and C, by Farhad Hassanzadeh, based on the P4C program in Lipman’s theory. The results of the study show that the sufficiency and frequency of creative philosophical thinking are the highest in these stories, with the components of reasoning and experimentation, and innovation in behavior. Critical thinking with the components of other-correction and text sensitivity, and caring thinking with the component of developing responsible thinking skills are placed next. The existences of these components as well as the linguistic and literary techniques in the stories provide the ability and possibility of the pragmatic ideas of the “research community” of the P4C program in the stories under study.

Children and adolescents poetry, as a literary genre, has a wide educational dimension. One of the most important educational aspects of this genre is dealing with religious concepts and themes. Persian and Kurdish language poets have taught these notions in accordance with the child’s understanding. The main purpose of the present study is to address this issue through a comparative study and analysis of religious themes in Persian and Kurdish children and adolescents poetry. To this end, using a descriptive-analytical method and a content analysis approach, the religious themes in 40 collections of Persian poetry and in 40 collections of Kurdish poetry were investigated to provide answers to research questions. The main questions were as follows: 1) What are the similarities and differences in religious themes of the two languages poetry? 2) What is the frequency of religious themes in the two languages poetry? One of the most important findings of the present study is that Persian poetry for children and adolescents focuses on the concepts related to the infallibles and the Holy Imams (65%), and next on the concepts related to the divine essence, the prophets and the Quran, respectively. In Kurdish poetry, however, the most frequent themes are the concepts related to God (72%) and then the themes pertinent to the prophets and the Quran. Neither of Kurdish and Persian poetry covers the concept of resurrection.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of implementing a Philosophy for Children (P4C) program on the perceived competence and cognitive flexibility of orphaned boys. The quasi-experimental research was based on a pretest-posttest control group design. For this purpose, 32 unattended boys in the age groups B (nine and ten years old) and C (eleven and twelve years old) of Azna boarding center were selected by convenience sampling method and were randomly assigned to two control and experimental groups. The statistical sample of the study completed the perceived competence and cognitive flexibility questionnaires as the research instruments before and after training. The Philosophy for Children course was held during eight weekly two-hour sessions. The findings of this study, using analysis of covariance, showed that the implementation of the P4C program, with a certainty of 95% (p < 0.05), leads to increased perceived competence (64% for cognitive, 54% for social, and 51% for physical), and cognitive flexibility (70%) in the experimental group. According to the results of this study, the P4C program can be used as a suitable solution to increase perceived competence and cognitive flexibility of orphaned boys.

The present study, using a descriptive-analytical method, aimed to analyze the concept of theology in the fiction works of Claire Joubert in terms of structural and content-related aspects. Theology is one of the basic principles of Islamic teachings and one of the most important issues in people’s religious and spiritual lives. If monotheism and theology are presented to children in accordance with their cognition and perception, and away from imitation and imposition, children can easily understand other basic principles such as prophethood and resurrection. In explaining the concept of God and Islamic theology to the age groups B and C, this Muslim writer delicately uses indirect methods with tangible examples to convey the concept of God. Using the art of fiction, a simple language, short and understandable sentences, happy and attractive images, Quranic verses and narratives, tangible phenomena of creation, and making use of human and animal characters in her works, the writer appropriately answers children’s questions concerning theology and evokes a sense of theism in them.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating role of academic vitality in the relationship between family communication patterns and attitudes toward creativity. The research method was descriptive-correlational. The statistical population of the study included all male high school students in Dezful in the academic year of 2019-2020, out of whom 370 students were selected as a sample by multistage random sampling method. The research instruments included the questionnaires of family communication patterns (Fitzpatrick and Ritchie, 1994), attitudes toward creativity (Fisher, 1991) and academic vitality (Dehghanizadeh and Hosseinchari, 2012). The evaluation of the proposed model was performed using path analysis. The results of path analysis of the research model in general showed that students’ creativity is influenced by family communication patterns and academic vitality; that is, among the dimensions of family communication orientation, dialogue orientation positively and conformity orientation negatively predict attitudes toward creativity (p < 0.001). The results also showed that dialogue orientation positively and conformity orientation negatively predict academic vitality (p < 0.001). Overall, the results showed that family communication patterns through academic vitality can affect attitudes toward creativity (p < 0.001).