Methodology

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The purpose of the Iranian Textbook Analysis is to study various forms of discrimination and intolerance. This research focuses on the compulsory textbooks (2006-2007) used by the majority of Iranian students, during five years of elementary school, three years of middle school, and the first, second, and third years of high schoolvii, and examines three main areas for discrimination:

  1. Women;
  2. Ethnic and Religious Minorities;
  3. Regional and International Outlook.
High school textbooks of specialized majors (such as those used in technical or vocational programs) and those of local and minority religious groups were not included in this study.

Our methodology used three types of analysis:

1. Statistical analysis of 3,115 pictures from all textbooks to demonstrate gender differences:

  • The number of women and men in the pictures;
  • The age of women and men in each picture;
  • The context of each picture;
  • The identity of the person in each picture in various fields;
  • The location of the photograph.

2. Quantitative analysis of Farsi textbooks from Grade 1 to 11 given their importance in pedagogy:

  • The identity of literary figures cited according to sex and origin;
  • The contents of the text, such as the biography of a scientific or religious personality, a moral lesson, a passage on painting, a text on an Islamic holy war, a soldier dying for Islam, a text on nature, etc;
  • Themes: society, culture/arts, politics, Islam, other religions, history, and science/nature;
  • Fundamental values: modesty, sacrifice, tolerance, and martyrdom. This quantitative analysis includes 412 lessons of Farsi textbooks. In sum, 325 important figures are in these lessons, distinguishable based on gender, domain (social, cultural, artistic, education, economic, political), and time (antiquity, medieval, contemporary).

3. Qualitative analysis of 95 textbooks (some 11,000 pages) from Grade 1 to 11 to select relevant sections for the study of discrimination and intolerance toward “others.” Analysts have kept an open and critical approach to guarantee that this analysis is objective and impartial, and have devised a detailed framework based on the objectives of the research to support the 745 selected passages from the textbooks.

 

Countries: 
Iran

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