محمدرضا سرمدی

Purpose: The purpose of the present research is to review the effectiveness of philosophy education program for children on critical thinking and its components in elementary fourth-grader girl students. Material and method: This was a semi-experimental study with designing pretest and posttest and the control group with following-up phase. Findings: This statistical population consists of elementary fourth-grader girl students in Arak, district 2. The sample of this research consists of 50 students that were selected by convenience sampling method and divided to two control and test groups. Shabani (1999) critical thinking questionnaire was used for data collection. Discussion: The results of covariance analysis showed that execution of the philosophy education program for children improves critical thinking, recognition ability, analogizing, and judgments in children (P<0.05). Furthermore, the effectiveness of philosophy education program for children was durable in fallowing-up test.

Purpose: Media literacy plays an important role in teaching and learning curriculum. Therefore, the purpose of the present research was to design and validate the media literacy education model in secondary school. Methodology: This was an applied study in terms of purpose and qualitative in terms of implementation method. The study population for designing the media literacy education model was the specialized council of the thinking and media literacy book department of the country (n=18 people) who were selected by census sampling method. Also, the study population for the validation of the media literacy education model was professors and researchers in the field of communication, Education Department experts and experienced teachers in the field of media literacy, 20 of whom were selected as a sample using the purposeful sampling method. The data collection tool was in-depth interviews in the model design section and calculation the agreement rate in the model validation section. Data analysis was carried out by coding method in MAXQDA ver.10. Findings: The results showed that the model of media literacy education in secondary school consisted of 40 components in 7 categories of media message creation techniques, media unknowns, audience studies, media and lifestyle, media consumption regime, harm of media literacy education and opportunity of media literacy. Also, the model of media literacy education in secondary school had an acceptable validity after calculating content validity ratio (CVR) (0.88) and content validity index (CVI) (0.91) based on the opinion of professors and researchers in the field of communication, Education Department experts and experienced teachers in the field of media literacy. Conclusion: Based on the results of the current research, it seems necessary to plan for the inclusion of media literacy education in secondary school curriculum through the identified components and categories.

Textbooks are the most important forms of media in open and distance universities. As a result, they should have features that enable the distance learners to attain in-depth learning without the presence of an instructor. This study aims to design a comprehensive model for open and distance university textbooks through analyzing the textbook concept using the hybrid model. In the initial stage, a review of literature up to 2011 was done (119 cases) using several databases.  Then, a field study was carried out by assessing 2 textbooks from open universities of England. Finally, data collected from the two previous stages were analyzed and evaluated, using Strauss and Corbin's method, and a proper model was proposed for open and distance university textbooks.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of philosophic mindedness training on the effectiveness of students’ virtual training components. The present study was a quasi-experimental with a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of this study includes all student’s master’s degree of curriculum in Payame Noor University, south Tehran branch in 1399-1400 academic year. The sample consisted of 32 students who were selected by goal-based random sampling method and randomly assigned into two experimental (n=16) and control (n=16) groups. After conducting pre-test on both groups, the experimental group received Smith's philosophical mentality dimensions (Comprehensiveness, Penetration, Flexibility) (1956) in six sessions of sixty minutes and within six consecutive weeks by e-learning method, but the control group received no intervention. The research tool was a 34-item researcher-made questionnaire. The content validity confirmed by judgment of experts and professors, and its reliability was calculated and at an acceptable level. Data were analyzed using univariate analysis of covariance (Ancova). The results showed that there is a significant difference between the two groups of experimental and control in the effect of philosophic mindedness training on the effectiveness of virtual training. Therefore, it can be concluded that by training and enhancing the dimensions of philosophic mindedness of students of the target community, it can be increased the effectiveness of virtual training courses.