Ma`rifat Farhangi Ejtemaei

Abstract In the contemporary world, one of the main responsibilities of educational systems is to cultivate a generation that is informed, responsible, and engaged in the process of social reconstruction. Textbooks, as formal and structured tools of instruction, play a significant role in transmitting values and strengthening civic skills. This study aimed to evaluate the content of lower secondary Social Studies textbooks based on the ideological indicators of social reconstructionism. The evaluation indicators were designed in five main categories—critical consciousness, civic participation, social justice, cultural diversity, and future-oriented development—and further divided into 22 sub-indicators derived from theoretical literature. The research method was quantitative content analysis, and the corpus included the three Social Studies textbooks for grades 7, 8, and 9 (published in 2024). The findings revealed a total of 389 instances of social reconstruction indicators across the textbooks. The highest frequency was related to civic participation, while the lowest appeared in indicators such as questioning, sense of competence, and resistance to discrimination. The conclusion suggests that although the textbooks address some aspects of social reconstruction, there is an imbalance among the indicators, and a revision is needed to strengthen critical and justice-oriented perspectives.