Investigating the Role of Education in the Political Socialization of High School Students: A Case Study of Kermanshah City

Abstract

Purpose: The education system plays an important role in all types of socialization of students, including political socialization. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigating the role of education in the political socialization of high school students.Methodology: This study in terms of purpose was applied and in terms of method implementation was descriptive from type of survey. The research population was all high school students of Kermanshah city, which half of whom were girls and half of whom were boys and they were selected by purposive sampling method. The instrument of the present study was a 17-question researcher-made questionnaire the role of education in the political socialization of students, which whose face validity was confirmed by experts and its reliability was obtained by Cronbach's alpha and combined methods 0.87 and 0.91, respectively. The data of this study were analyzed by methods of exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling in SPSS software.Findings: The findings of this study showed that the factor loading of all components of educational norm assimilation, Persian language teaching as the cement of society, visual and interactive education and students' political socialization were higher than 0.70 and their reliability with Cronbach’s alpha and combined methods was higher than 0.80. Also, the model of the role of education in the political socialization of high school students had a favorable fit and all four components of educational norm assimilation, Persian language teaching as the cement of society, visual and interactive education and students' political socialization had a positive and significant effect on the role of education in political socialization of students (P<0.05).Conclusion: The results showed that the effective components on the role of education in the political socialization of students were included the educational norm assimilation, Persian language teaching as the cement of society, visual and interactive education and students' political socialization. Therefore, by using the aforementioned components can be taken an effective step towards political socialization of students.