Evaluating the teaching-learning process, organization, objectives and the content of the pre-school curriculum for the students with low mental capability: The Hammond model

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quality of the pre-school curriculum of mentally retarded students’ in the West Azerbaijan in the school year of 1390-1391. The study’s sample consisted of managers, parents, teachers and students of the West Azerbaijan province centers; due to the dearth of the students all of them were recruited as the study’s participants; parents’ sample was chosen based on Morgan and multiple cluster sampling method. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean) and inferential statistics (t one variable) were used. Questionnaire, check lists, students’ scores and school documents were used to collect the needed data. The results of this study showed that the quality of the organization of human resources were unfavorable on behalf of administrators, teachers, students, observers and parents. Overall, curriculum’s content was considered acceptable by all the participants. The quality of the theoretical instruction was favorable according to administrators and teachers and undesirable according to parents while the quality of the practical teaching was good according to all groups. Paths to achieve the social-emotional development goals was regarded satisfactory by managers, teachers and observers but unfavorable by the parents. Achieving the linguistic/communicative goals was known undesirable by administrators and parents and was desirable from the observers’ and teachers’ points of view. Considering the results pertinent recommendations have been provided at the end.