Discourse Analysis of Skill-Based Education Policy in Iran's Higher Education System

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Postdoctoral researcher of Management and Entrepreneurship, Faculty of Economics and Accounting, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

2 Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, Faculty of Social Sciences, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

10.22059/jppolicy.2026.107873

Abstract

The present study aims to analyze the discursive order governing the skill-based higher education system in the Islamic Republic of Iran and to explain how educational policies are formed and consolidated within the theoretical framework of Laclau and Mouffe. The main issue is to understand the mechanisms of articulation of meaning in higher education policy-making and to examine how educational preferences are organized in the context of historical, ideological, and economic conflicts after the Islamic Revolution. Educational policies within this discourse are divided into three time periods: 1357-1360, 1360-1368, and 1368 to date, in which in each period, the skill-based higher education discourse has attempted to consolidate its meaning with the help of relevant educational policies. The articulation of the aforementioned discourse was analyzed and examined in a historical context that is the same as the challenges of educational-development policy-making. The research findings show that the discourse of skill-based higher education in the Islamic Republic of Iran is articulated around the central signifier of “applied Islamic education,” and signifiers such as “resistance skills,” “negation of non-practical knowledge,” “skill privatization,” “entrepreneurial university,” and “practical cultural confrontation” are organized around this central signifier. Each of these signifiers has emerged through the approval and promulgation of upstream documents and laws that have necessitated the adoption of specific educational policies. Educational policies have taken on ideological, practical, and developmental dimensions in this historical process.

Keywords

References

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Iranian Journal of Public Policy
Volume 12, Issue 2
June 2026
Pages 253-268

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