A Study of National Identity - Formation in Iranian Primary School Textbooks

This study with the help of content analysis investigates, the case of national identity in Iranian primary school textbooks. Using content analysis, it has studied all the textbooks in primary school period. In this study, 27 volumes of textbooks in the curriculum year of 1381-82 including 512 lessons, 3199 pages, 3332 pictures were analyzed from the approach of four categories. The categories are as follows: the values of national identity, religious values, revolutions values and other categories which were individually investigated on the basis of the defined criteria by researchers. To obtain and to compare the significant levels of each category, it used Shannon Antrophy method, which is a new method of interpreting the messages and processing the data of a problem in content analysis. According to the findings, not enough attention was paid to the above-mentioned categories. In the lessons, pages, pictures of these textbooks, the role of forming national identity in the present generation, which is the main purpose of the study, has been underestimated.