مطالب

The environmental crisis is increasing today and this makes it imperative for people more than ever to expand their understanding of the environmental concepts. Accordingly, films can be an effective tool to do that, but finding the right medium is a matter of debate. Needless to say, different forms of films have different effects. Within the same line, the current paper aims to test out the effectiveness of narrative and non-narrative documentary films on the learning and retention of the environmental concepts. The research method was quasi-experimental, administering a pre-test and a post-test on 20 male and 20 female participants between 20-27 years old. The samples were randomly categorized into two groups. Both groups had an equal number of participants who did not have any earlier  environmental activities and their majors were not related to environment and natural resources studies. They were from a variety of educational backgrounds. The groups were homogenous in terms of GPA, too. Firstly, the pre-test was administered to both groups. One group watched a narrative documentary on environmental and natural resources for 8 weeks, while the other group watched the non-narrative version of the same film for the same period. Then, a learning and retention test was given to both groups. The MANCOVA test was administered on the data and the findings showed a significant difference between the two groups in terms of learning and retention. It was concluded that narrative films can have a more significant effect on the learning and retention of the variables.

The purpose of this study was to design and validate the environmental curriculum framework based on the upstream documents in the middle school, which was carried out using a qualitative-quantitative method with exploratory design in two sections. The research population in the first section of the research was upstream documents. The sampling method from this population was criterion-based. The data collection tool comprised a checklist and taking notes whose validity was assessed and approved by experts, masters, and professors. The output of this section was the environmental curriculum framework in the format of four elements of the curriculum (purpose, content, method, evaluation), which was used to validate the 42-item questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire approved from the experts' point of view and reliability by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The statistical population of the study in the validation section comprised 2259 people of the experts and masters of the social sciences, experimental sciences, and Farsi literature from six districts of education in Isfahan in the academic year of 2018-19, of which, 329 people were selected by categorized relative random sampling. The data obtained from this section were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis method using Lisrel software. The results showed that the fitness was appropriate for the proposed model based on the indexes (X2/df=1.947), (GFI = 0.95), (AGFI = 0.90), (RMR = 0.81).

Sustainable agriculture depends on the use of eco-friendly technologies by farmers.This research was conducted to identify and evaluate farmers' intent to use pheromone traps for controlling rice pests in paddy farms of Simorgh County, Mazandaran Province. Methodologically, this research was carried out using a questionnaire-based survey. The statistical population of this research included 1,500 farmers in 29 villages of Simorgh County, in which 204 farmers were selected using Cochran formula. Samples were selected using proportionate stratified random sampling. The formal and content validity of the questionnaire was based on experts' opinion and its reliability was calculated based on Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated between.70 and.80 for the scales of research variables. Data were analyzed using SPSS 20 software. The results showed that 33.8% and 16.7% of the respondents intended to use pheromone traps relatively strongly and strongly, respectively. The regression path analysis method was used to identify the direct and indirect effects of independent variables on the final dependent variable of intention to use the pheromone traps. The results of the path analysis showed that subjective norms had the most direct effect on the dependent variable (intention to use) (r=0.947). In terms of total direct and indirect effects, the perceived barrier to use with a total impact of 1.373 was in the first place. According to beta coefficients, the variables of attitude, behavioral control, and subjective norms had total effects of 0.391, 0.690, and 1.076, respectively.

One of the important issues in EFL instruction is the idea of eliminating students’ linguistic errors through providing corrective feedback (CF). Accordingly, this study investigated the effect of various CF types (i.e., comprehensive, selective, and no feedback) on advanced EFL learners’ writing in different writing conditions (i.e., individual & collaborative). 132 EFL advanced learners aged from 14-20 were considered as the main participants. Learners were divided into 6 groups (i.e., three individual and three collaborative writing conditions). Furthermore, each writing condition included three groups with selective, comprehensive, and no correction orientations. Data collection tools and procedures encompassed an institutionalized Placement Test, pre-test, and post-test. The treatment that lasted for nine sessions was followed by a post-test. Data were submitted to a series of ANOVA tests with follow up pair-wise comparisons and independent-samples t-tests. Findings indicated that: (1) CF, especially selective one, was more effective in enhancing learners’ writing accuracy, and (2) members of the collaborative writing groups outperformed those in the individual ones in terms of their writing accuracy development. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed in relation to enhancing writing accuracy of the learners.

The present study intends to study Iranian EFL teachers’ attitude towards post-method pedagogy (PMP) and its implementation in private language institutes. The participants of this study were 80 male and female EFL teachers from different private institutes in two cities of Mazandaran province in Iran. For the purpose of data collection, this study applied a Likert type questionnaire. In order to analyze it, minimum, maximum, mean, and standard deviation were calculated, then different tests including Friedman test, Wilcoxon test, Pearson Correlation, and Independent T-test were utilized. Considering the findings of the study, one cannot conclude that teachers have a positive attitude toward post-method principles. In fact, the findings show uncertainty about the actual emergence of PMP principles in EFL institutes in Iran and the fact that there is a long distance to the actual realization of principles of Particularity , Practicality, and Possibility , especially the last one. Furthermore, there is a significant relationship between respondent teachers’ familiarity of some principles of PMP and their experience, field of study, and education degree.

This research is related to the usefulness of different machine learning methods in forecasting time series on financial markets. The main issue in this field is that economic managers and scientific society are still longing for more accurate forecasting algorithms. Fulfilling this request leads to an increase in forecasting quality and, therefore, more profitability and efficiency. In this paper, while we introduce the most efficient features, we will show how valuable results could be achieved by the use of a financial time series technical variables that exist on the Tehran stock market. The suggested method benefits from regression-based machine learning algorithms with a focus on selecting the leading features to find the best technical variables of the inputs. The mentioned procedures were implemented using machine learning tools using the Python language. The dataset used in this paper was the stock information of two companies from the Tehran Stock Exchange, regarding 2008 to 2018 financial activities. Experimental results show that the selected technical features by the leading methods could find the best and most efficient values for the parameters of the algorithms. The use of those values results in forecasting with a minimum error rate for stock data.