نشریه اندیشه های نوین تربیتی
سال ششم شماره 4 (پیاپی 18، زمستان 1389)

Attending to the topic of creativity is a must, given the scientific and technological advances, both achieved and expected, and the role that the educational systems and their philosophies can play in promoting creativity. It seems that the post-modern educational philosophy stresses the need to develop critical thinking skills through cooperative learning and facilitating teaching which promote freedom of expression and action, leading to new ideas and their trial. In post-modern classrooms borders are crossed and limitations of traditional teaching in which there is a fixed curriculum and a passive learner are removed. Post-modern schools help learners to learn how to listen to others and while welcoming their criticisms, be able to criticize and create new solutions.

Given the importance of emotions and emotional intelligence as described in Barron's theory, it would be appropriate to ask if the Iranian text books pay attention to this topic. To assess the extent of such coverage, a sample of first year high school text books was selected and their contents analyzed. The sample included Farsi Literature, Social Studies, Religion and Life, and Life Skills text books. Using Barron's 15 components of emotional intelligence, both the educational objectives and contents of these books were analyzed. Results show that observed objectives are not compatible with the development of emotional intelligence as the appearance of its different components in the studied text books is very insignificant. Nevertheless, the self awareness, problem solving, accountability, and relativity components were covered in all four text books.

To improve the quality of education, one can start from improving the text books used, and to do so one needs to evaluate the existing textbooks which requires at least one instrument. However, constructing an instrument itself needs a set of theoretical guidelines in order to facilitate both the construction and validation processes. The guidelines were drawn from the principles of Educational Psychology based on which an observation instrument (check list) was constructed and then validated through a trial on high school Science text books and a survey conducted on a sample of 80 teachers, Educational Psychologists, Educational Technologists, and Curriculum Planners. The instrument includes 145 items which are highly consistent as the instrument's Alpha Coefficient was calculated to be 0.99 and its reliability 0.87. The instrument is comprehensive and interactive as it gives feedback that can be used to improve the text books.

In the Science of Learning, and from a social constructivist perspective, evaluation of educational processes is a necessary task aimed at the improvement of both processes and products. The low quality of education is a problem that can bring about many damaging consequences. Evaluation is a way of identifying the problems and ways of solving them. There are evidences hinting at the low quality of the doctoral courses in Iran. To assess the quality of these courses and to identify the shortcomings that may be the root causes of the said problem, from among all such courses at Alzahra University, four were chosen and their programs, entrance exams, and dissertations were evaluated in terms of being scientific (i.e. "scientisity"). Their professor's and student's opinions were also surveyed in this regard. The findings are indicative of equally low levels of scientisity in all four doctoral courses. Considering the dominant culture in Iranian system of higher education and the absence of a scientistic attitude, these findings are surprising. Hence, one way of getting out of the current trouble would be the strengthening of scientistic attitude and promotion of scientistic culture in order to have better curriculum planning and implementation leading to higher quality outputs.

To educate students in environmental issues, it is necessary to address the topic in all related textbooks. To see the extent to which such attention is paid in Iranian educational system, three primary school Social Studies text books were content analyzed using a check list of 55 items on ecological problems related to water, air, earth, and noise. The reliability of the instrument was assessed to be 0.92. The results show that the reviewed text books pay little attention to such issues. The Fourth Grade's text book with less than half of the issues covered, pays the most attention while the Fifth Grade's text book covers only a quarter of the said issues. Among the four areas of concern, water related issues are covered the most (with 30% coverage) while noise related topics are covered the least (with a 20% coverage).

To deal with ambiguity seems to require creativity. To explore the relationship between these two, a sample of 320 female first year high school students was randomly selected and their creativity and ability to tolerate ambiguity measured using Aabedi's and McDonald's measures. The data analysis shows a significant and positive correlation between the two characteristics. Thus, it can be said that those who have more tolerance for ambiguity are more creative.

It is obvious that attention is necessary for learning and if it is impacted by stress learning would be impaired. To show this negative effect a group of 40 male students were randomly selected and then assigned to two equal size groups of control and experimental. The treatment consisted of doing cognitively stressful tasks. Both group's selective and focused visual attentions were measured following the treatment. The number of errors made by the experimental group in counting and categorizing stimuli was significantly higher than those committed by the control group. Hence, it can be said that stress reduces attention and subsequently learning.