Hegemonic struggles in one high school classroom: A Critical Discourse Analysis of high school students' democratic dialogue

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.