Objective: Research on adolescence in Iran has grown substantially over the past seven decades; nevertheless, no integrated account of its conceptual and discursive transformations has yet been provided. The present study aimed to conduct a historical-thematic analysis of research titles on adolescence in Iranian scientific discourse.
Method: This descriptive-analytical review employed a historical-documentary approach and historical-thematic analysis. The research corpus consisted of all titles related directly or indirectly to adolescence indexed in NoorMags, SID, and IranDoc’s Ganj repository. A total of 21,500 titles were analyzed without sampling across six historical periods from 1954 to 2026. Data were coded and analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s six-phase method of thematic analysis.
Findings: The analysis led to the identification of eight major themes, in descending order of frequency: mental health and clinical interventions; family and parent–adolescent relationships; social pathology and delinquency; media and digital technologies; children’s and young adult literature and aesthetic studies; physical education and sport sciences; criminology and legal issues; and religious and moral education. These themes followed different trajectories across the seven decades: some, such as mental health, showed continuity and intensification, whereas others, such as literary studies, peaked in particular periods. The findings also revealed major paradigmatic transitions, including a shift from a negative to a positive and empowering perspective, from monodisciplinary to interdisciplinary research, and from theoretical borrowing to localization. At the same time, several structural gaps persisted across the entire period, including gender bias, with approximately 70% of studies focusing on girls, the absence of systematic attention to economy and social class, and the lack of longitudinal and participatory research.
Conclusion: The history of adolescence in Iran is a history of transformations in the relations among power, knowledge, and subjectivity. The future of adolescent studies in Iran requires moving beyond monodisciplinary, deficit-oriented research toward interdisciplinary, participatory, and empowering research that regards adolescents as agents of social change.