The contribution of Stuart Hall to analyzing educational policy and reform

Abstract

This article focuses on the contribution of Stuart Hall to the study of educational policy and reform, using the experience of the Citizen School initiative in Porto Alegre, Brazil as a concrete example. This experience was a participatory educational reform implemented during the 16 years of the Workers' Party tenure in Porto Alegre's municipal administration. Hall's concept of articulation and his particular use of concepts such as ideology, discourse, common sense, and hegemony lay the foundation for the theoretical framework that provides a potent lens to analyze the complexity of educational policy and reform. In particular, this assemblage of concepts offers a vantage point to understand a counter-hegemonic initiative such as the Citizen School, because it helps to situate this experience as a particular historical articulation of discursive practices both connected to the recreation of common sense and anchored in a particular material context. First, the article will briefly contextualize the Citizen School experience. It will then show how Hall's concepts develop a complex theory to analyze complex phenomena such as educational policy and reform, in particular the Porto Alegre experience.