ABSTRACT
In the past few decades, many scholars seeking insights into the linkages between school education and social power, as well as guidance for transformative pedagogic practices, have been engaging themselves with the theory of Antonio Gramsci. Through rereading and reinterpreting the original writings of Gramsci, notably The Prison Notebooks , these researchers strive to secure a “correct” reading of the texts of Gramsci related to schooling and to discover his “ordained” pedagogic prescription. These efforts have created a number of scholarly works (Aronowitz, 2002; Coben, 1998; Entwistle, 1979; Giroux, 1999; Morgan, 1996). This literature, nevertheless, is too text-centred, and the authors’ approaches fail to develop Gramsci’s theory through interrogating it by diverse historical cases. It is against this context that researchers employing Gramsci’s ideas for empirical investigation of education can make a unique contribution.
