Educational Equality: An Unfinished Puzzle of Education in the 21st Century

Educational equality is a process that all practitioners are thinking about and want to put it in their supervised environment. The purpose of this study is to investigate educational equality as an unfinished puzzle in the 21st century.

The present study is a review type in which keywords such as educational equality, educational inequality and educational justice have been used in academic databases such as Magiran, Scientific Databases of Jihad University (sid.ir), IranDoc, Noor specialized magazines (Noormags) and Google and for library search, books, theses, publications published from 1385 to 1397 (Persian) and Latin articles from 2008 to 2016 have been used which numbered more than 39 sources, and due to overlapping only 29 sources have been selected and analyzed as the main sources.

According to the findings of the study, educational inequality varies from developed to developing countries. In developed countries, inequality of educational opportunities often revolves around racism, low income and high income families, blacks and whites, immigrant and non-immigrant and then, educational inequality is considered in terms of quality of education and the amount of provided educational services. Educational inequalities in developing countries can be attributed to gender inequality and lack of access to appropriate educational space. Towns and villages do not have equal teachers compared to provincial centers. The educational facilities (buildings, equipment, etc.) in rural and urban areas are very low in comparison to provincial centers, and in some cases, outlying of the areas and cultural deprivation and low literacy and also bilingualism are effective in developing inequality.

According to the findings of the present study and the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the horizon of 1404, reaching the region’s leading position in economics, science and technology, enjoying advanced knowledge and superior human resources will undoubtedly be achieved by striving to provide the community with equal opportunities and the basis for maximum participation in the development process.