A systematic Study of the Philosophical-Social Foundations of the Electronic Curriculum in the Context of Medical Education

Introduction: Solid foundations are essential to successfully implementing a curriculum, and e-curriculums are no exception. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the socio-philosophical foundations of e-curriculums in medical education. Method: The present study was a systematic review. The scope of the research included studies from 2014 to 2024. A systematic search was conducted in electronic databases to identify studies, and internal data search engines such as Normags, Magiran, Civica, foreign IJET, Google Scholar, Eric, Scopus, Science Direct, and 28 related studies were analyzed. Descriptive, interpretive, theoretical, and practical validity were used to control the quality of the extracted codes. Finally, the data were analyzed using content analysis. Results: The findings showed that 81 open philosophical social epistemological concepts supporting the electronic curriculum were used, which can be divided into six epistemological bases of realism, existentialism, relativism, relationalism, ontology, and pragmatism based on the type of epistemological perspective. Finally, based on the selective coding process, the counted concepts were classified into three main categories: positivism, interpretive and interpretive, and critical and emancipatory. Conclusion: In the process of education from the modernist to postmodernist era, the positivist approach has always been needed as a helper to the critical epistemological perspective and cannot be definitively ignored. Therefore, it is suggested that the medical curriculum planners use the characteristics of these elements along with the deprecating approach to design an electronic curriculum.