Investigating the Amount of Attention Paid to Critical Thinking Skills in the Fourth Grade Primary School’s Social Teachings Textbook Authored in 2016 in Comparison to its 2002 Version

Abstract

The stream of nurturing thinking individuals has been started since Socrates time and it has been so far atop of the education experts’ attentions. It seems that the period of education at school can be a proper opportunity for achieving this goal. Particularly, the textbooks’ contents provide a proper opportunity in accomplishing the thought-oriented educational objectives. Revising and updating the books’ contents in proportion to the daily increasing needs of the generations is inevitable and necessary. Thus, the evaluation of the old and new books is of a great importance in elaborating the success in meeting these goals. In the present study, the amount of attention paid to the critical thinking skills has been assessed in the fourth grade primary school’s social teachings textbooks authored in 2016 in comparison to its 2002 version based on the content analysis method and through taking advantage of a checklist made by the researcher according to Matthew Lipman’s critical thinking skills. Nine skills and their assessment indicators have been taken into account in the checklist from the perspective of Matthew Lipman. Based on the findings, the coefficient of engagement in social teachings textbook authored in 2002 is equal to 0.57 and the coefficient of engagement in the social teachings textbook authored in 2016 is equal to 1.18. So, paying attention to critical thinking is deemed favorable in the 2016 version of social teachings textbook (new edition). It is suggested that the contents of the other textbooks should also be evaluated so that they can be revised and rewritten, if needed.