Formative and informative nature of ecology content in elementary school textbooks of islamic religious education

Abstract

Based on the analysis of the Islamic religious education textbooks, this research aimed to explore the nature of content with respect to its formative and informative character, as well as to investigate the teachers’ stances about the character of the ecology content in the elementary school textbooks of religious education. The starting assumption was that the research findings would show that the ecology content in elementary school textbooks of Islamic religious education is by its nature both formative and informative. We used a theoretical analysis method, a content analysis method, and a descriptive analytical survey method. The research corpus comprised Islamic religious education textbooks, and the sample consisted of 100 religious education teachers from Tuzla and Zenica. The findings related to the teachers’ stances showed that the majority of teachers consider that formative and informative ecology content is not sufficiently represented, but that the formative ecology content is present more. On the other hand, the results of the content analysis indicated that informative ecology content is more present than the formative content. Keywords: religious education, textbook, teaching content, informative and formative character.