A Content Analysis Exploring Life Skills Components in Elementary School Social Studies Textbooks

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the frequency and importance of life skills components in social studies textbooks. The research method is content analysis and the units of analysis were sentences and images. The statistical population was all the textbooks of social education in the elementary school in 2021, in which the whole society was considered as a sample. The research tool is a researcher-made checklist and data was analyzed via MAXQDA software. After determining the frequency of indicators, for the comparing the frequencies, Chi-square and Shannon's Entropy method was used. The results revealed that the highest frequency of the life skills components observed in the sixth grade with 1048 cases, the second rank belongs to the fifth grade with 908 cases, and the last rank belongs to the fourth grade with 401 items. The results of chi-square test confirmed the significant differences in frequencies. Also, the results of Shannon's Entropy analysis indicated that the highest coefficient of importance is related to the component of creative thinking and the lowest is related to self-awareness. Overall, the findings have useful implications for designing school-based interventions in teaching life skills.

Keywords

• content analysis
• social studies textbooks
• life skills
• elementary schools