Represention of National Identity in Primary School Farsi Textbooks

In this article, the components of Iranian identity have been examined in the Primary school Farsi textbooks in the educational year 2014-2015. The aim of research was to extract the amount of dealing with national, religious (Islamic), sectarian (Shiite) and ethnic identities in these textbooks. The research method is content analysis; the sample size is 246 text items and 518 images in the Farsi textbooks of first to sixth levels in elementary school. The results indicate that identity components are observed in 61 percent of text items and 52.1 percent of images. In 51.4 percent of this amount, the components of national identity and in 43.3 percent, the components of religious (Islamic) identity have been highlighted. Also 50.7 percent of images were related to religious identity (particularly Islamic dress) and 34.8 percent to national identity. Although the levels of macro and micro identities have been considered, but ethnic identity is rarely dealt with and almost neglected.