Content Analysis of Third-Grade Junior and Senior High School Religous Textbooks in Terms of Their Responsiveness to Students’ Affective-Psychological and Social Needs

Religous textbooks are intended to present a divine value system to their audiences. The target adolescents and youth, on the other hand, are not only involved in puberty developments and try to find their own identity, but also, they are living in an era in which it is permissible to challenge all religious fundamentals and their underlying axioms. Moreover, the globalized context confronts the youth with different and sometimes conflicting values. In sum, religous textbooks are expected to provide the required cognitive knowledge (clarifying life principles based on divine policy), and at the same time, provide the adolescents and youth with information needed to help them distinguish between right and wrong in their individual and social lives. So in this study, we concentrated on content analysis of third-grade junior and senior high school religous textbooks, with regard to the components of response to students affective-psychological and social needs. Therefore, the present study was conducted by developing the categories needed for content-analysis of the above-mentioned textbooks in terms of two dimensions of their response to target adolescents and youth affective-psychological and social needs. Statistical analysis of the data indicated that the books were poor according to the issues and categories cited above.