Dominant Educational Discourses Research Articles

Land of misfit toys: Mothers’ perceptions of educational environments for their children with Down syndrome

In this qualitative study, 19 mothers discussed the education of their children with Down syndrome. Mothers reflected on their expectations and perceptions of different educational environments, focussing particularly on their understanding of inclusive education. The findings suggest that mothers’ beliefs and decisions related to the education of their children with Down syndrome were embedded in culturally constructed notions of normalcy and stigma. Their support for particular educational programmes was inextricably linked with their understanding of the sociocultural meaning of Down syndrome. Findings revealed the existence of institutional resistance to inclusive education as well as dominant educational discourses that positioned students with Down syndrome as other and identified segregated learning environments as most appropriate for these students.

Privilege, compromise, or social justice: teachers’ conceptualizations of inclusive education

This qualitative study explored the beliefs of teachers in the USA about the education of students with disabilities, focusing on their conceptualizations of inclusive education. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews with 30 teachers. The findings highlight multiple interpretations of inclusive education and suggest that teachers’ support for inclusive education may be linked with the ways in which they conceptualize this practice. Most teachers’ beliefs about the education of students with disabilities were embedded in dominant educational discourses that centered on the otherness of some students, and an unquestioned acceptance of implicit assumptions in special education. Findings support the need for a paradigm shift in teacher education, moving away from deficit models towards an understanding of inclusive education as linked with issues of social justice.

Power, politics and transnational policy‐making in education

This paper analyses the relation between power and politics under the conditions of economic globalisation and transnational policy‐making in education. The paper argues that power lies not only with the producers of the dominant educational discourse nor simply with the very discourse which is circulated and reproduced in national legislations, local policies and pedagogic practices; it lies with the increasingly global endorsement of a specific perception of what education should be about: to maintain or increase ‘economic competitiveness’, ‘growth’, ‘development’ and ultimately ‘progress’. Progress remains the central signification of societies today, as the paper argues, and, therefore, the main source of power, namely of widespread consent around a largely common set of education policies promoted across countries.

Other Desires and Public Recognition: Re-reading Mayo’s Plato’s Aristophanes

Desire is often hailed as a liberating or equalizing force in educational practices; some consider its very presence to be endowed with the power to interrupt oppressive educational practices as well as the social norms that undergird these practices. Cris Mayo reflects this attitude about desire’s potential within dominant educational discourses in her 2007 essay, “Disruptions of Desire: From Androgynes to Genderqueer,” describing desire as “the bridge between what is and what might be, disrupting stale patterns and creating new formations.”

Youth, Gener & TIC: Imaginaries in the Construction of Information Society in Latin American

This article reflects upon the social imaginary that sustains the dissemination of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) as a condition for them to be accepted and granted social and subjective meaning. Based on applied research on digital literacy programs for Latin American youth, the paper delves into the construction of youth both as a category and as a social group. It analyzes the main characteristics and problems of youth in current environments, especially in Latin America, providing data on their access to ICTs. Based on a typology of the programs reviewed and a comparative analysis of adults and youth representations and assessment of ICTs, the article examines the dominant educational discourses and practices that encourage access to technology of excluded or at-risk youth population. It also discusses the ways in which these programs characterize and implement a gender equity approach.

The Impossibility of Minority Ethnic Educational ‘Success’? An Examination of the Discourses of Teachers and Pupils in British Secondary Schools

This article argues that in Britain dominant educational discourses of ‘the ideal pupil’ exclude minority ethnic pupils and prevent them from inhabiting a position of authentic ‘success’. It suggests that ‘the successful pupil’ is a desired yet refused subject position for many minority ethnic young people — even for those who are (to some extent) performing educational success. The article draws on interview and discussion group data from teachers, minority ethnic parents and minority ethnic pupils (aged 14–16 years) that were collected across four separate studies. All the studies were conducted in British secondary schools and focused on the identities and experiences of British Chinese, British Muslim and ethnically diverse samples of young people. The article engages in an unpicking of the multiple ways in which minority ethnic pupils are Othered in relation to the dominant identity of the ‘ideal pupil’ as White, male, middle class, and so on. The article moves beyond the notion of a singular Other position, engaging with the slipperiness of power and entanglements of ‘race’, gender, class and sexuality through the conceptual device of a trichotomy. This integrated model moves beyond notions of simplistic ‘stereotyping’ to explain how complexly located minority ethnic pupils are always-already positioned as ‘other’ within British educational discourse, such that even ‘high-achieving’ minority ethnic pupils may experience success as precarious.

On (not) representing sex in preschool and kindergarten: a psychoanalytic reflection on orders and hints

In this conceptual piece I use two pedagogical texts or moments—a preschool/kindergarten diagram representing body parts, and an adult dance class—to explore gaps in curricula and practice with respect to the treatment of young children's sexual curiosity. Looking first at social constructs of children's sexuality and sexual curiosity, and at some of the ways dominant educational discourses, particularly developmentally appropriate practice discourse, respond to them, I argue that complications and ambiguities arise when such constructs collide with the inner lives of teachers and learners. I propose that psychoanalytic theory offers helpful ways to think about these complexities, and call on concepts of pleasure and unpleasure, repression and defence against curiosity to reflect on how education might at times invite and even insist upon the curiosity it seems to be trying to avoid.

Shaping up? Three acts of education studies as textual critique

This paper presents a study of dominant educational discourses through textual critique and argues that such an approach enables education studies to preserve an important distinction from teacher training. The texts deconstructed here are specific to English education, but the discourses at work have international relevance as the rhetorics of accountability, performance and measurement (which we call cells of discourse) have global reach. Ward described a national picture in England whereby the great majority, if not all, of education studies undergraduate courses appear to be taught alongside, or within (through shared modules) teacher training programmes. But from a sociological position, these are two increasingly conflicting arenas—the study of education and the training of teachers. In response, Ward called for the subject to radicalize teacher education. The implications of this are significant if education studies is to retain a status as agent of critique. In this paper we return to the theme of education studies as a discrete practice from teacher training and suggest that any acceptance of a proximal relation to teacher education is counter‐productive. In so doing we offer three contemporary examples of the subject at deconstructive work, scrutinizing the published standards for teacher training in England, employer discourse and the Tomlinson report (commissioned by the English government to offer proposals for the reworking of vocational education) and the new curriculum for adult literacy in England. Particular attention is given to analysing the ways in which such texts speak the currently powerful discourse of standards.

Getting the Big Picture: Regulating Knowledge in the Early Childhood Literacy Curriculum

As part of the Commonwealth’s drive to enhance Australia’s competitiveness in the global economy, Australia is five years from implementing ‘National Benchmarks’ to leverage measurable literacy outcomes from schools. This ‘back to basics’ agenda is in tension with another drive to foster advanced thinking skills in children. Teachers are being positioned as deskilled technicians on the one hand and model ‘new economy’ workers on the other, whilst working to meet the needs of diverse student populations. This article discusses the impact of these tensions on ‘Riverside Primary School’ located in a culturally diverse, socio-economically disadvantaged suburb of Adelaide. A case study of student–teacher interactions during a literacy lesson is used to illustrate how dominant educational and political discourses operate at a classroom level to construct children as ‘normal’, ‘gifted’ or ‘slow’.

Consenting Adults Only? Patient education in the doctor's surgery

This paper explores patient education in the general practice setting. It draws on a research study carried out in Nottinghamshire, UK, to challenge the view that doctors use their power in educational encounters to silence or dupe patients into accepting normative social patterns and relationships. The study found that power appeared to work in a different and more subtle way. Patients chose to subject themselves to the controlling effects of a dominant patient educational discourse (prevention) due to its wider cultural association with freedom, personal betterment and bodily health. The paper concludes by suggesting that challenges to reactionary political forces need to address how dominant discourses work at the level of desire to seduce people into conformity.

Writing for the classroom: Papers in process, students in progress?

Abstract The present paper is based on data collected at a prominent Midwestern university. It examines the implications of process writing and peer review as practised in one introductory class of argumentative writing. The paper discusses two elements of disempowerment: (1) The instructor's control of the interaction and influence upon the written product was secured through classroom consensus. Classroom consensus reflected the social and cultural organisation of the group and discouraged the writing of one socially and culturally marginalised student. (2) As a means of preserving the integrity of the dominant educational discourse (Giroux, 1986) the practice of process writing and peer review relied on the students to support and actively exercise the power differential of the participants. Working within that framework, the instructor and the powerful students indirectly helped each other to legitimate biased and irrelevant critique and to constrain, suppress, and silence the individual, less powerfu...