فریبرز درتاج

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of KWL educational strategy and conceptual mapping strategy on students' critical thinking. Methodology: This research was based on a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test with two experimental groups and one control group. The statistical population consisted of all male students of the third grade high school of Miandoab in 2016-17. Three classes were selected through multistage cluster sampling. Two classes were randomly selected as experimental group and one class as control group. One of the experimental groups was taught in KWL and the other in a conceptual map. The control group was also trained in a conventional way. The pre-test and post-test data were used to collect data from the California Formation B Questionnaire. Findings: To analyze the data was used one-variable covariance analysis. The findings of the study showed that education through the Kwl strategy and conceptual mapping strategy is effective on critical thinking students (P <0.001). It was also determined that the effectiveness of KWL strategy on students' critical thinking was more than conceptual mapping strategy (p <0.001). Conclusion: Based on this study, both cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies reinforce students' thinking. However, due to the findings of this research and related studies, it is better to use metacognitive strategies along with cognitive strategies because using metacognitive strategies, students monitor their learning process and become more aware of complex issues and points and they get more aware. Based on these findings and previous research, it is recommended that modern educational methods such as KWL and concept maps be used in teaching

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the training of self-encouragement based on Adler's theory of psychological capital and academic engagement of female high school students. This study was a semi-experimental research and used a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The sample consisted of 60 students (30 participants for experimental group and 30 participants control group) who were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling. The experimental group was then educated for self-encouragement for 8 sessions while the control group did not receive any training. The instrument used in this study was Schaufeli & Bakker's (2006) Academic Engagement Questionnaire and Luthan's (2007) Psychosocial Capital Questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze data and Multivariate analysis of covariance was used to investigate the research hypotheses. By analyzing the data, results indicated that self-encouragement training increased the academic engagement and psychological capital of female students. Regarding the effectiveness of this training on increasing the academic engagement and psychological capital, this training is evaluated useful for students.

Webster's Wisdom Questionnaire is a well-known self-assessment scale, which can cover a wide range of future wisdom studies. This research was conducted with the aim of factor analysis and examining the reliability and validity of Webster's Wisdom Questionnaire and to evaluate the relationship between wisdom and age and gender. This questionnaire contains 40 questions assessing the people's wisdom. In a cross-sectional study, 395 (293 males and 102 females) of Sanandaj city, selected by randomized cluster sampling, were assessed using Webster's Wisdom Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using correlation coefficient, factor analysis and t-test. Using factor analysis, four factors of the proper use of experiences, emotional regulation, reflection, and humor were extracted. To assess the reliability of this questionnaire, Cronbach's alpha and Pearson correlation were used. The results revealed that this questionnaire had good convergent validity. In addition, the comparison of these factors between males and females indicated that females significantly obtained higher score than males in two factors of using the experiences and emotional regulation. Moreover, the high correlation of factors with the total score of the questionnaire and poor correlation of the factors with each other reflect the adequacy and efficiency of this questionnaire to be used by researchers, experts, and psychologists in Iran.