Participation in Education Documents: Comprehensiveness and Coherence

The purpose of this study was to explain the place of participation in education super ordinate documents and to examine the compatibility of these documents around the issue of participation in education. The lack of coordination of education programs on the issue of participation and their constant change can be rooted in the interpretability or silence of education documents. Accordingly, studying and analyzing the documents of education system as the main source and orienting educational decisions can lead to recognizing the position of participation of contributing and effective factors in education; and explaining how to integrate and adapt the orientation of documents around concept of participation.

The research method was document analysis and the technique used to analyze the collected data was content analysis.Documents examined include the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, general education transformation policies, theoretical foundations of the educational transformation document (philosophy of education, philosophy of formal and public education, guideline), fundamental education reform document, national curriculum, map of country's scientific comprehensive and the Sixth Development Plan Act.

The findings showed that participation status can be categorized into seven categories: foundations, principles, necessity, driving policies, requirements, areas and factors and models of participation. Theoretical conflict, ambiguity, silence on some dimensions and overcoming one-dimensional views on participation, unsupported policies on participation, and lack of general policies across other documents; It has been revised and made necessary in some documents, such as the document of fundamental change and its theoretical foundations. In the issue of the principles governing participation, there are contradictory statements in the super ordinate documents that contradict each other. the principle of cost-benefit analysis is inconsistent with the primacy of educational materials in politics, and in many cases leads to conflict. Although various dimensions of participation has been highlighted in the theoretical principles, the economic aspect of participation prevails to the other aspects of partnership to the extent that the position of documents moves away from the big level and gets closer to the practical realm. The lack of a clear explanation of participation in other aspects, such as professional and specialized aspects, parents or councils, and conversely, the availability of clear models of global experiences of participation in the economic sector and imitating them has overwhelmed the one-dimensional view of participation endangering the integrity of the documents on the subject of the participation since there is no comprehensive model for participation. it seems that the super ordinate documents should define a boundary between the sovereignty and nontransferable sectors and the incumbency and transferable sectors. But the theoretical ambiguity and confusion of the position of the documents in the objective division of these tasks is evident. the main problem that has undermined the position of participation in super ordinate education documents is the lack of an indigenous paradigm for participation, and at the same time the propositional and austere use of liberal models of participation in education. This leads us to revise models of participation and to formulate an indigenous model for participation. Without an indigenous and religious-based model for participation, it will be very likely to be influenced by liberal models and these models will not lead us to Islamic justice.