Date of Award
2008
Degree Type
Dissertation
First Advisor
Carolyn Panofsky
Abstract
This qualitative study of educating for democracy used teacher-research and Critical Discourse Analysis to identify, describe, and explain how students' discourse sustained and resisted ideology and hegemony. The research was conducted in a course which I designed and taught that was intended to educate for critical democracy. The participants were high school seniors in a relatively privileged community who chose to enroll in the elective course. Data collection included audio taped and transcribed classroom conversations, copies of student work, student journals, a teacher's journal, field notes, as well as formal and informal interviews with students. Four major understandings were constructed from my analysis: student discourse can function to sustain ideology and hegemony; student discourse can also resist ideology and hegemony; constructing dialogical classroom practices enables students to explicitly engage in hegemonic struggles; and, critical pedagogy is a viable choice for education for democracy. The study also raised significant questions: how student discourse may differ in various contexts; whether observed changes in student dialogue are related to classroom practices or other social elements; how students link other social elements with classroom discourse; and, how the teacher's discourse functions to sustain or resist ideology and hegemony. The constructed understandings and emergent questions offer significant implications for democratic education, particularly for critical educators.
Recommended Citation
Walsh, John A. III, "Hegemonic struggles in one high school classroom: A Critical Discourse Analysis of high school students' democratic dialogue" (2008). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 2263.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/2263
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