Studying the Level of Attention to Character Development in the Gifts of Heaven Textbooks for the Upper Elementary Level
Keywords:
Moral character, cultivating moral character, moral education, the book Gifts from HeavenAbstract
Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the level of attention to components of moral character development in the fourth, fifth, and sixth-grade "Gifts of Heaven" textbooks.
Methodology: This descriptive-analytical study employed Shannon entropy content analysis. The statistical population included all textual, visual, and activity pages of the "Gifts of Heaven" textbooks for the academic year 2022–2023. Due to the limited size of the population, the sample was equal to the population. A checklist of 20 moral character components was used to code the content at three levels: cognitive, affective (tendency), and behavioral (action). Data were processed using the Shannon entropy method.
Findings: Findings indicated that the components of order, love, commitment, empathy, and respect had the highest frequencies. Most attention was given to the cognitive level (80.95%), with lesser focus on affective (53.76%) and behavioral (27.45%) dimensions. Shannon entropy analysis ranked components such as order, commitment, empathy, and respect at the top (importance coefficient: 0.93), while self-knowledge had the lowest importance (0.019).
Conclusion: The textbooks primarily emphasize select components of character, with insufficient and imbalanced attention to others across the three developmental levels. A comprehensive revision is recommended to ensure more balanced coverage of all moral components.
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