Designing a Citizenship Education Curriculum Model for Students with Special Needs (Mentally Retarded)

The purpose of this study was to design a citizenship education curriculum model for students with special needs.The qualitative methodology of the data theory of the foundation is used and in terms of research philosophy. It is in the category of applied positivist paradigm and in terms of qualitative and quantitative research, it has an inductive and deductive approach and survey strategy. The statistical population of this research is experts and specialists of special curriculum planning and experts of exceptional organizations. Sampling was performed using non-probabilistic judgmental method. Interviews were conducted with research samples. In order to sample, the snowball method was used and the interview was conducted in a semi-structured manner with open and general questions up to 15 people to saturate the data, but for more assurance up to 24 people were interviewed. The factors were identified using the foundation data technique using Atlas ti software. In-depth interview was used as the main data collection tool at this stage. Based on the obtained results, a total of 106 concepts and 21 categories or open source codes were identified and extracted. The 21 identified categories were divided into 6 main datasets of the foundation. Among the identified factors, the axial coding paradigm was performed and based on that, the linear relationship between research categories including causal conditions, axial categories, contextual conditions, intervening conditions, strategies and consequences was determined. The results obtained showed the importance of the practicality of citizenship education for students with special needs. The results presented in this study show that the most important results obtained from the interviews emphasized the content of citizenship education and training methods. Regarding teaching and learning methods, the formation of informal groups and monitoring the activities of groups, learning in practice and student-centered and participatory teaching methods are emphasized.