ABSTRACT
With the main goal to demonstrate how to employ critical discourse analysis (CDA) in education, this chapter briefly presents the field’s foundations and trends, and then leads the reader through contemporary applications of the method. In a brief review of the approach’s theoretical underpinnings, the chapter first defines the central concepts of “discourse” and “critical.” Next, the chapter provides three example analyses from the field of education, demonstrating how to design and conduct studies of language-in-use and social life that examine the reproduction of, and sometimes resistance to, power, ideologies, and hegemony. By uncovering dominant ideologies through analyses of everyday texts and talk, critical discourse analysts should ideally open possibilities for challenging and reforming hegemonic and inequitable social practices in education. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some key challenges with critical discourse analyses and makes suggestions for moving the methodology forward in educational research and practice.
