Fiction and Moral Education: A Study in Elementary Course Curriculum

This paper aimed to clarify the role of moral concepts in elementary course curriculum. By qualitative content analysis, firstly, the moral concepts in textbooks are inductively determined and then sorted into more general categories. Then, according to fluency and integration in any class and also evolutionary arranging in the whole course, the vertical and horizontal organizations of these concepts are examined. The results showed that Persian books in all courses have the most fictions and the most moral concepts. Unfortunately arranging of concepts in those books are not noticed and among fifteen moral concepts only “good behaving”, “loving humankind” and “effort” have the fluency and integrity factors, qualitatively or quantitatively. The other concepts, not in the repetition, nor in the arrangement, have an appropriate organization in different courses.