هادی خشنودی

The comprehension of Qur’anic legal texts ( āyāt al-aḥkām ) is a complex process central to Islamic jurisprudence. While traditional hermeneutics ( Uṣūl al-Fiqh ) provides interpretive principles, the specific cognitive-linguistic inference types mobilized by jurists and their teachability remain underexplored in empirical research. Therefore, the current research aimed to explore the inference types mobilized during the jurisprudential interpretation of Qur’anic texts and then investigate the effect of their explicit training on jurisprudential comprehension among advanced learners of seminary schools in Iran. To this purpose, a sequential mixed-methods design was employed. The initial qualitative phase used a phenomenographic approach, analyzing data from expert interviews (n = 6), documentary research, and a literature review to identify key inference types. The subsequent quantitative phase utilized a pre-test/ intervention/ post-test design with an intact class of senior jurisprudence learners (N=17). A researcher-developed test measured comprehension before and after a five-session intervention that provided explicit instruction on the identified linguistic inferences. The qualitative phase identified nine core linguistic inference types essential for jurisprudential comprehension, including Backward Build-Up, Elaboration, Causation, Pragmatism, Analogy, Prediction, Instrumentation, Semantic Framing, and Cognitive Space Blending. The quantitative phase also revealed a statistically significant improvement in jurisprudential comprehension following the intervention. A paired-samples t-test showed a significant mean score increase from 11.71 (SD = 2.28) in the pre-test to 16.76 (SD = 1.20) in the post-test (t (16) = −13.73, p < .001), with a mean gain of 5.06 points. The findings confirm that jurisprudential reasoning operates through a definable set of linguistic inferences that must be learned.

Purpose: Considering rich theoretical underpinnings of positive psychology (PP), the current study aimed to investigate the effects of an extra educational curriculum on the basis of PP on distress and attainment of Iranian high school students who are living in dormitories in boarding schools. Methodology: This is an empirical study with a post-test only control group design in which a sample of 346 male students were selected through convenience sampling from two boarding schools in Qom city during 2018-2019. A translated and validated version of K10 distress questionnaire (Kessler et al, 2010) was administered to them and 67 students with high distress symptoms were identified and randomly allocated to a control group (N=23), experimental group one (N= 22) and experimental group two (N=22). First, the experimental group underwent 16 sessions (twice a week for 90 minutes) of PP curriculum integrated with religious counseling. Employing a post-test only control-group design, the group’s performance on a distress scale (Goldberg, 1981) and their mean scores were compared after the intervention. Kruskal-Wallis and ANOVA tests were used to compare differences between the groups. Findings: Findings revealed that positive curriculum alleviated distress symptoms of the experimental groups vis-à-vis the control (χ2 (2) = 52.851, p ≤ 0.001). Also, to investigate the effect of the intervention on educational attainment, their semester mean scores were analyzed through ANOVA (F = 8.244(2, 66), p≤0.001) where promising results were obtained. Conclusion: It was concluded that both interventions exerted meaningful effects on the attainment and distress of dorm-living students. Also, follow-up studies added proof on the permanence of the effects.