This study, entitled examines the ways in which cultural values and identities are represented in the official documents of the Ministry of Education. The primary objective is to identify the dominant discourses and analyze their relationship to components of national identity and global requirements. The research questions are as follows: Which cultural discourses are reproduced in official policies? How do these discourses represent cultural values and identities? And what implications do they have for the Iranian educational system?

The central hypothesis posits that the cultural policies of the Ministry of Education are articulated through three major discourses—religious, national identity, and globalization/pragmatism. The religious discourse occupies a central position, national identity plays a complementary role, and the globalization discourse has become more prominent since the second half of the 2010s.



The research employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), drawing upon Fairclough’s framework as well as Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory, thereby enabling a simultaneous examination of both the linguistic and socio-political dimensions of the texts. In addition, selected experts were consulted through a Likert-scale survey to complement the qualitative analysis.

The findings indicate that although the coexistence of these three discourses reflects the dynamism of cultural policymaking, in practice it has generated tensions and contradictions. At the school level, these contradictions manifest as implementation ambiguities; at the student level, as identity gaps between indigenous values and global competencies; and at the macro level, as policies lacking coherence and stability. The study’s policy recommendations emphasize establishing a balanced relationship among the three discourses, operationalizing key concepts, strengthening global competencies alongside the preservation of religious and national values, and designing continuous monitoring and review mechanisms to reduce discursive inconsistencies.