This study aims to analyze the role of political discourses in shaping the value orientation of Iran’s national curriculum. The research adopts a qualitative content analysis with a discourse-oriented approach. The main research question examines how political discourses influence the value orientation of the national curriculum and through which mechanisms these values are reproduced. The research corpus consists of Persian and English academic articles and policy-related texts addressing educational justice, resistance, guardianship, and national identity within the formal education system. The unit of analysis includes statements and thematic elements related to political and normative values. The findings reveal that four dominant discourses, namely value-identity foundations, justice, resistance, and national identity, constitute the prevailing meaning structure of the curriculum. The normative-value discourse functions as the central framework that directs other discourses through language, imagery, symbols, and instructional content. Educational justice largely remains at the level of rhetorical claims, while resistance and national identity are systematically reproduced in both the explicit and hidden curriculum. The results confirm that political discourses play a structural role in defining and stabilizing the value orientation of the national curriculum.

Introduction
National curricula function not only as pedagogical instruments but also as key mechanisms for transmitting social values, political norms, and dominant ideologies. In many societies, especially those with strong state involvement in education, curricula operate as discursive spaces in which power relations, collective identities, and moral frameworks are reproduced. In Iran, due to the close relationship between political authority and educational institutions, the national curriculum extends beyond technical learning objectives and serves as a vehicle for promoting official value systems. Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, political discourses such as guardianship, resistance, justice, and national identity have become embedded in educational policies and textbooks. These discourses shape learning objectives, narrative structures, and symbolic representations. Despite their significance, many previous studies have focused primarily on organizational or content-related aspects of curriculum design, paying limited attention to its ideological and discursive dimensions. This study seeks to address this gap by analyzing how political discourses influence the value orientation of Iran’s national curriculum. Using critical discourse analysis, the research examines the mechanisms through which political meanings are produced, legitimized, and normalized within educational texts.
Materials and Methods
This study employs a qualitative methodology based on discourse-oriented content analysis. The research examines political discourses and value orientations in Iran’s national curriculum through a dual-level analysis of academic literature and official school textbooks. Academic and policy-oriented publications are treated as secondary data sources reflecting dominant interpretive frameworks, while selected textbooks are analyzed as primary institutional texts through which these discourses are operationalized. A purposive and criterion-based sampling strategy was adopted. Academic sources were selected based on their explicit engagement with political discourses in education, focus on national curriculum policies, or use of interpretive analytical approaches such as discourse analysis and qualitative content analysis. Textbooks were selected from key subject areas, including social studies, history, language, and religious education, due to their relevance to political and normative content. In total, twenty-three sources, including seventeen Persian and English academic studies and six official textbooks, were included in the analysis. Data analysis was conducted in three stages. First, open coding was applied to identify recurring conceptual themes such as justice, resistance, guardianship, national identity, and ideological reproduction. Second, axial coding was used to organize these themes into broader analytical categories. Third, critical discourse analysis was employed to examine processes of meaning construction, value naturalization, and the marginalization of alternative narratives. To enhance validity and reliability, triangulation across academic and textbook sources and cross-checking of coding procedures were employed. Conceptual saturation was achieved when the inclusion of additional sources did not generate new analytical categories.
Discussion
The findings indicate that Iran’s national curriculum is structured around several interrelated discourses that jointly shape its value orientation. Among these, the normative-value discourse occupies a central position and provides the conceptual framework for organizing other discourses. The discourse of justice is prominently emphasized in policy documents and academic discussions. However, analysis shows that justice often remains at a rhetorical level and is rarely translated into concrete pedagogical practices. This gap reflects structural constraints and ideological priorities within educational governance. The discourse of resistance functions as a key identity-forming mechanism. Concepts such as struggle, martyrdom, and opposition to external threats are repeatedly emphasized in curricular narratives. These themes are reinforced through both explicit content and hidden curricular practices, including school rituals and symbolic activities. Guardianship and political authority are also embedded in educational texts through moral and religious framing. Rather than encouraging critical reasoning, these narratives often promote obedience and loyalty as ethical imperatives. This approach contributes to the formation of a normative political subject. National identity discourse integrates cultural, historical, linguistic, and religious elements into a unified framework. This synthesis reinforces political legitimacy by presenting state ideology as an inseparable component of collective identity. From a sociological perspective, these discourses operate through mechanisms of selection, emphasis, omission, and repetition. Language, imagery, narrative structures, and institutional practices jointly contribute to the normalization of political values.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates that Iran’s national curriculum functions as an organized discursive system in which political, cultural, and educational domains are deeply interconnected. Rather than serving as a neutral pedagogical tool, the curriculum operates as a mechanism for reproducing dominant value frameworks. Four interrelated discourses, namely normative values, justice, resistance, and national identity, structure the curriculum’s meaning system. Among them, normative discourse plays a central organizing role, while other discourses reinforce and legitimize it. The findings suggest that educational reform in Iran cannot be effectively pursued without addressing the ideological foundations of curriculum design. Sustainable change requires greater openness to plural perspectives, critical pedagogy, and participatory decision-making. By adopting a critical discourse approach, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of how education functions as a site of power, meaning production, and ideological reproduction. It also provides a framework for future research on curriculum policy and cultural governance in non-liberal educational systems.