Identifying and Analysis of Curriculum Research Trends in Iranian Higher Education

Subject Areas : Research in Curriculum Planning

Batool Saiedi ¹ , Asghar Soltani ²

1 - Department of Education, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran.
2 - Associate Professor of Curriculum, Department of Education, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran.

Received: 2023-03-13 Accepted : 2023-07-04 Published : 2023-05-22

Keywords: Curriculum, Research trend, Higher Education,

Abstract :

The purpose of the current research was to identify and analyze trends in curriculum research in Iran's higher education. The research method was document content analysis through thematic analysis, and the research instrument was a researcher-made checklist of thematic analysis. All articles in the field of higher education curriculum in educational science journals from 2011 to the beginning of 2021 were reviewed and 1321 articles were selected by purposeful sampling. The research method in the qualitative part was theme analysis, during which the basic, organizing and global themes were extracted. for quantitatively analyze the extracted topics, frequency and percentage statistics were used. Content validity of the instrument was confirmed by curriculum experts. The reliability of the instrument was also estimated by Holsti's reliability index method. Results revealed that the themes of teaching-learning, thematic contents and content areas of the curriculum, teaching methods and e-learning were most prominent in the research trends of higher education. Among the elements of the curriculum, the element of curriculum implementation was the most important. Qualitative research method was the dominant method used in the researches, students were the most participants in the studied researches, and the geographical scope of most of the researches was regional. It was concluded that the research trends in the field of higher education did not have a proper balance in terms of the investigated components. Based on this, it is suggested that the journals call for specialized and special articles in line with the subject needs proposed in this research.

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