مطالب

Sustainability has been recognized as one of the greatest challenges facing social systems in the 21st century. Social systems should have the knowledge and the power to lead this transition and to induce the changes towards this new paradigm. In this regard, it is of crucial importance to achieve a correct and comprehensive understanding of the concept of sustainability and its key components. Although some successful studies have been reported, there is a lack of a local framework for investigating the sustainability of social systems in the context of the Islamic approach, as well as the use of a mixed methods approach to support an integrated and holistic conceptualization and implementation of sustainability. This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework for the sustainability of social systems based on the Holy Qur’an and assess its validation in universities, which was conducted in two studies, respectively. In the first study, after extracting the key themes from the Qur’an, the relationship between them was shown in the proposed framework consisting of foundations, principles, factors, and dimensions of sustainability. Then, in the second study, the cross-validation method was used. In this section, confirmatory factor analysis was carried out (N=61) to evaluate the fit, reliability, and validity of the framework. Further, concurrently percentage agreement coefficient of semi-structured interviews (N=10) was used to analyze the internal validity of the framework. The results of both quantitative and qualitative studies confirmed the fit, reliability, and validity of the framework. The present research contributes to this literature by presenting a local framework for the concept of sustainability of social systems based on the Qur’an, in a holistic and inclusive perspective, using a mixed methods approach. This study can be a useful and effective initiator for studies and theoretical extensions in conceptualizing sustainability based on Qur’anic teachings, and also pave the way for the application of this knowledge in the functional-practical areas of social systems in Islamic societies.

Scientific thinking is a type of knowledge seeking involving intentional information seeking, including asking questions, testing hypotheses, making observations, recognizing patterns, and making inferences. The purpose of this research was designing a package of scientific thinking training and its ‘effect on problem-solving skill in preschool children. For this purpose, a study was designed in two steps. At first time, based on Kuhn theory and by reviewing and analysing available resources, the scientific thinking training package was designed. This teaching package includes discussions between the researchers and the child about stories with topics related to children's environment that they may not have encountered in everyday situations in the form of questions. At second step, in order to determine the effect of scientific thinking training on problem-solving, 30 children aged 5 to 6 (15 girls-15 boys) with a moderate score in Raven intelligence test was chosen from three primary schools. Subjects were trained individually in scientific thinking for 8 sessions. Data were analysed using repeated measures analysis of variance. Findings showed that teaching scientific thinking significantly improves problem solving skills (p <005) and this effect is stable over time. The results of this study show that preschool education and interaction with teacher is an opportunity to provide stimulus situations appropriate to children's abilities, and provide conditions for improving problem-solving.