Family Pedagogies and Intergenerational Learning on the Iranian Left

• In Event: Global Politics, Educational Self-Determination, and Intergenerational Learning in the Iranian Diaspora

Abstract

Objectives: This paper analyzes 1) how elder diasporic Iranians who identify as leftist narrate their political learning across the life course, including how their political experiences shaped the ways they raised their children; and 2) how the children of the left interpret these political histories in their own upbringing, lives, work, and parenting. This project is grounded in 20th-century Iranian revolutionary history, marked by intense organizing for economic and social justice. While these movements helped overthrow the U.S.-backed Shah in 1979, the post-revolutionary state later imprisoned, executed, or exiled many of the leftists who had supported the revolution. The elder participants in our study are members of this community.

Theoretical framework: Dominant theories of human development and parenting often reflect normative assumptions rooted in WEIRD populations (Henrich et. al., 2010). While cultural variation is increasingly acknowledged, political variation and participation in social movements remain underexplored. Our framework weaves sociocultural, political, and ethical perspectives on learning with historical analyses of social movements and their afterlives. We understand learning as a socially mediated process that transforms individuals and cultural environments
across micro-genetic, ontogenetic, and cultural-historical scales (Cole, 1996; Lee, et. al., 2021; Rogoff, 2003). We also draw on scholarship on worldmaking, small histories, and the afterlives of revolutions (Sohrabi, 2019; Davari, 2019; Keshavarzian, 2021; Moradian et al., 2019).

Methods + data sources: Our study is grounded in thirty in-depth interviews (4-5 hours each, across multiple sessions) with elders and adult children of the Iranian left in the United States and Canada, alongside archival investigations into the intellectual, ideological, and historical context of the left from the mid-20th century to the present. We take a collaborative approach, engaging participants in meta-reflective conversations and co-analysis. Moving beyond individual units of analysis, we view participants’ stories as collective and historically situated, with family-based case studies enriching communal and contextual understandings.

Results: Iterative qualitative coding reveals key insights into the complexities of political learning across generations. First, we observe a dynamic process of intergenerational toggling, as participants’ stories shift between memories of parents or grandparents and moments with their own children or grandchildren, weaving narratives that trace continuity, revision, and change in childrearing. For adult children of leftists, this includes how political inheritances shape their pedagogies with children—and, for some, with students. Second, participants describe navigating dominant ideological messages in schools (inside or outside Iran) alongside their political values and efforts to support their children’s meaning-making. Finally, many articulate theories of learning and development in dialogue with their theories of socio-political change.

Significance: This paper contributes to theories of learning that recognize the influence of social movements—not only on activism and work but also on parenting and intergenerational relations. Given the specific political history of the Iranian revolution, we also consider how elders’ evolving perspectives and their children’s revisions offer important resources for contemporary political education. We show how theorizations of social movements expand when children and families are treated as central to revolutionary change, and the variegated forms of becoming that arise. [500]

Authors

• Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

• Mahdi Ganjavi, University of Toronto

• Fatemeh Hajnaghizadeh, Northwestern University