a reflection on structural change in iranian education system and its effects on schools’ context

Iranian public education system had an indigested structural change in recent decade that is very informative for educational experts, because of its unpredicted operational challenges and unwanted outcomes. the main obvious challenges were in the fields such as teachers’ allocation, schools’ combination, and problems in developing appropriate curriculum for new school grades. in this article the hidden aspects of this structural changes were examined with regard to psychological and contextual factors in iranian elementary schools and classrooms. it seems that in analyzing the structure or grade-span configuration of education system, we should contemplate on invisible and uncertain aspects of the structural change and broaden our understanding of its impact on student academic achievement. the overall guiding research question for this study is the following: does grade-span configuration influence adolescent learners in dimensions other than academic achievement? the positive answer to this question and a couple of contemplative questions are presented and explained.