Abstract Purpose – Considering the role that students’ diverse identifications play in education, this paper aims to contribute to the developing discourse on multicultural education concerning the status of ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity in Iranian upstream educational documents (UEDs). Design/methodology/approach – This paper explores the status of ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity in Iranian UEDs through quantitative and qualitative content analysis. Findings – Findings show that three continuous patterns are repeated throughout the documents. (1) The so-called diversity: although there are promising and positive statements about diversity in the documents, they are indirect, and this level of attention is very superficial and limited. (2) Affirming assimilation: the documents are covered by presenting the Islamic-Iranian identity, and somehow almost all the issues raised in the documents end up in this pattern. (3) Pattern of contradictions: content analysis shows that the content of documents does not have intellectual and logical coherence. Practical implications – This research paper points to the need for a systematic analysis of ignoring diversity operating in UEDs in Iran. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper broadens the document analysis as one of the first research to critically explore the depiction of diversity in important UEDs in Iran.
