The Contrastive Content Analysis of Two Teaching Series "Let's Learn Farsi" and "Modern Teaching of Persian" Based on the Bloom's Revised Taxonomy in Cognitive Domain

Study of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages (TPSOL) textbooks can reveal the relationship between some learning problems of Persian learners and the curriculum. The content of the questions and the exercises of these books are of a particular importance because of the function they have in achieving the goals. In the present study, two teaching series, "Let's learn Farsi" and "Modern teaching of Persian" have been analyzed based on Bloom's Revised Taxonomy (BRT). After extracting the questions and the exercises in the textbooks and codifying the verbs, frequency and percentage of the six levels of Bloom's cognitive domains were calculated using the NXₓ 100/S and then they were diagramed. In this formula, "NX" is the number of the exercises, "100" is the total percentage, and "S" is the total number of exercises. Then the distribution of the questions in these cognitive levels and their conformity with the related levels in the books (elementary, intermediate and advanced) were studied. The results showed that in "Modern Teaching of Persian" the distribution of the questions from elementary to advanced levels has a compatibility with Bloom's cognitive levels. However, in some volumes a revision is needed. In volumes 1 and 2 of "Let's learn Persian" a logical and acceptable approach conformable to learning goals was observed. But in volume 3, in many cases, the hierarchy of cognitive domains was not in line with learner's need. At the end, some recommendation for editing the textbooks were provided.
Extended Abstract:

Introduction

According to Yarmohammadian (2007) content analysis is a systematic research method for an objective and quantitative description of the textbooks content and a comparison between content structure and the goals of the curriculum. In this way, "a kind of analysis that is useful for the program developers and the writers is the content analysis of the text of the books" (Ahmadi, 1987, p.180). As Bloom's Revised Taxonomy (BRT) is an accepted universal model for analysing the textbooks content and most of the content analysis are designed and compiled according to this model, it is necessary to analyse and evaluate the questions and the exercises of the two educational series "Modern teaching of Persian" including five volumes by Ehsan Ghabool (2015) and "Let's learn Persian" including three volumes by Hasan Zolfaghari, et al (2002) in the framework of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. This study aims to answer the following questions:

How is Bloom's Revised Taxonomy used in two educational series, "Modern teaching of Persian" and "Let's learn Persian"?
Which level(s) of Bloom's revised taxonomy in these two educational series is (are) distributed?
How is the hierarchy of the questions from objective concepts to abstract concepts distributed (elementary, intermediate, advanced)?

In a research, Ebadi and Mozaffari (2016) studied the representation of revised taxonomy of educational goals of Bloom in two series of books of teaching Persian to the young and adults of other languages. The content was analysed according to a coding system. The results showed a significant difference between the different volumes of the young learners' series and also a significant difference between two collections based on the learning objectives.
In another study, Miri et al. (2020) analysed the content of the book "Persian reading and comprehension" questions based on Bloom's revised classification. The results of this study indicated that in this book, the cognitive skills of lower levels of Bloom's classification are used more than the higher ones. Among non-Iranian researchers, no work has been observed in the field of content analysis of TPSOL sources.

Methodology

There are several methods for classifying educational goals and assessing the alignment of components of the educational system, including Bloom's revised taxonomy, Anderson and KrathWohl (2001) Porter and Smithson (2001) and Web (1997) models. Among the mentioned models, Bloom's revised model is more important because it has two dimensions of knowledge and cognitive process. The cognitive process consists of levels of Remember, Understanding, Apply, Analyse, Evaluate and Create.
After collecting and extracting all the questions and exercises of the mentioned books and coding their verb, the corresponding frequencies and percentages in each of the six levels of Bloom's cognitive domain were calculated through the formula "NX ₓ 100/s" and a figure was drawn. In this formula, "NX" represents the number of exercises, "100" represents the total percent and" S" represents the total number of exercises. Through the above formula, the percentage of all exercises in different levels of Bloom's revised classification is calculated and described in the research results section.

Results and Discussion

In total summary of all the questions of the lessons, the goal of understanding has the highest percentage and then the goal of applying it is observed with a significant difference, in the next row. The goal of analysing and creating are at the next level of distribution, respectively, and the goal of remembering is, after the goal of evaluating, the lowest percentage in the entire book.
In the analysis of the distribution of intermediate questions, it is expected that the number of questions in the field of remembering and understanding is less and in the areas of applying, analysing, evaluating and creating it has an upward trend, but the tables show that the distribution of questions in the field of remembering and understanding is not significantly different and it has been declining in terms of applying and creating. But it has had an upward trend in two areas of analysing and evaluating.

Conclusion

A comparative study of the data shows that in "Modern teaching of Persian" series, the distribution of questions from the elementary to the advanced level is largely in line with Bloom's cognitive learning objectives. In the first volume of this educational series, despite addressing the highest level, i.e. creating, evaluating is ignored. The third volume (intermediate level) does not include the goal of remembering, which is justifiable, while the fourth and fifth volumes (advanced level) deal with it, which contradicts the hierarchy of learning objectives. In the fourth volume, the distribution of questions of the goal creating has been declining compared to previous volumes. It is worth mentioning that in the fifth volume, although all areas are covered, but the level of understanding, which is one of the lowest goals, has the highest level of scattering of the questions.
The contrast analysis of "Modern teaching of Persian" by considering the process of questions from elementary to advanced and moving from lower to higher levels of cognitive domains, is consistent with BRT and it is a suitable educational resource for achieving learning objectives in language teaching.