Document Type : Review article
Authors
1
Researcher in Sociology, ACECR, Khorasan Razavi Branch, Mashhad, Iran
2
Assistant Professor in Sociology, ACECR, Khorasan Razavi Branch, Mashhad, Iran
Abstract
Over the past five decades, Iran has experienced several unprecedented waves of migration. During this period, providing educational services to migrants has consistently been a major policymaking and planning challenge to deal with these large groups of people. A systematic understanding of the issues and consequences of migrant education can provide evidence-based insights for policymakers and planners in the fields of education and migration in Iran. This study aimed to review and synthesize Persian scholarly research on migrant education in Iran and identify research gaps in this field. To do so, a systematic review was conducted based on the PRISMA framework. The study population comprised all articles published between 2011 and 2023 in scientific-research journals approved by Iran’s Ministry of Science, Research and Technology and indexed in four Persian-language academic databases: SID, NoorMags, and Magiran. Following a systematic search based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 20 articles were selected for final analysis. The selected studies were examined in terms of the bibliographic features of the articles and journals, time of publications, geographical dispersion of studies, research topics, theoretical and methodological approaches, data collection and analysis methods. The findings suggest that educational inequality, identity-related challenges, and the integration of migrant students were among the most frequently studied topics. However, the existing literature exhibits several significant research gaps, including limited methodological and data diversity; the paucity of comparative studies and approaches sensitive to diversity; limited disciplinary and geographical diversity, a lack of evaluation and outcome-assessment studies, insufficient research on self-governed and international schools; and the absence of historical, generational, and cross-national studies. The role of international aids and cooperation in migrant education has also received scant scholarly attention. These findings suggest that more methodological, geographical, and disciplinary diversity, along with expanded comparative, evaluation, and outcome-oriented research, could contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of migrant education in Iran.
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