Search results

This paper evaluates the content of Iranian primary school textbooks – as the fundamental educational tool in transmitting of key components – to highlight to what extent the content pursues the philosophy of heritage education. Heritage preservation, known to be fostering of the sustainable development, is successfully achieved through the education of young people. The philosophy of heritage education is to cultivate the sense of responsibility toward heritage preservation through the approaches of education through heritage, about heritage and for heritage in which students obtain knowledge, understand the value and develop their attitudes.

This study applies the content analysis approach to evaluate the subject textbooks of the Iranian primary school curriculum. The content analysis was conducted for 51 textbooks across nine subjects and the teacher guidebooks for the art and physical education subjects. Historic country of Iran with a rich local and world cultural and natural heritage is significant context for this study.

The findings show that, however, heritage elements are applied for conveying the content of some subjects, there is the lack of clarifying of the concept and importance of heritage and cultivating the sense of responsibility toward its preservation.

The results contribute significantly in the heritage education literature as well as improving heritage education in Iran by highlighting the key points which should be considered to design heritage education programs.

Like other components of cultural heritage, the preservation of archaeological sites is important because they constitute a unique and irreplaceable legacy, something that has been received from the ancestors and that should be passed on to future generations. The purpose of this paper is to explore how well secondary school students in Bujang Valley, Malaysia, understand the concept and value of archaeology and to what extent they are interested in archaeology.

A questionnaire survey was administered to 110 students, aged 14 and 15 years, from secondary schools in the Bujang Valley area.

The results showed that most of the students were interested in archaeology and had a moderately accurate understanding of what archaeology entailed. Their main information sources included museum visits and participating in local archaeological projects. Participants demonstrated a sense of archaeological responsibility in objecting to the illegal trafficking of artefacts.

Moreover, these findings have significant implications for heritage and education authorities in the Bujang Valley in terms of planning for educational programmes to raising the awareness of local communities.

These findings expand upon the knowledge of students’ attitudes towards archaeology.