As part of a larger study, through this research I examined the ideological foundations of public school teachers' interpretations of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I discovered that White teachers in this study talked about oppression in ways that implied it was a natural part of life, and even in some cases necessary for learning.…

In this commentary, we use the occasion of the proliferation of dual enrollment to examine the discursive construction of difference between high school and college literacies, and its effects on teachers and students. This discursive divide has real, material consequences. It informs (and constrains) literacy practices and pedagogies, becomes a…

This article respectfully challenges the metaphor of "open doors as resistance" by reconceptualizing power in the English classroom. It also offers an alternative metaphor -- open doors as acts of love and possibility -- through different theoretical and practical underpinnings. When we, according to the authors, conceive of teaching…

In society, expertise bestows directive power--the authority to tell others what to do and how to do it, or simply to do it for them. In a school system that still operates on an authoritarian model, the author's expertise as a writer and teacher gives her directive prerogative when responding to student writing. Traditionally, teachers have used…

This article explores the contributions of students' voices in order to highlight some issues that have been central to disability studies--issues of identities, and their correlations to power, temporality, inclusivity, and place among the most salient to contemporary theories in the sociology of disability and education. Building on previous…

In this article, the author demonstrates how a Bourdieusian analysis of poetic transcriptions offers great potential for helping teachers and students to understand how they are responding to state policy mandates in schools. Specifically, the author uses Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital, and habitus to analyze two poetic transcriptions,…

This article looks at one instance of a teacher attempting to discipline students for sexually profane heteronormative language and the resulting events that demonstrate a discipline over all discourses in the school. Using Fairclough's critical discourse analysis (2005) to analyze the narrative, I argue that the discourse in the school reinforces…

This paper examines the dynamics of authority relationships and curriculum enactment in a lower-level, college-preparatory US History class. It explains how a teacher and his students construct a relaxed order shaped by uncertain educational goals, the use of entertainment, and students' wants. Ambiguity and entertainment in the teacher's practise…