ABSTRACT
The importance of the relationship between power and discourse for a radical pedagogy is that it provides a theoretical grounding for interrogating the issue of how ideology is inscribed in those forms of educational discourse through which school experiences and practices are ordered and constituted. Moreover, it points to the necessity of accounting theoretically for the ways in which language, ideology, history, and experience come together to produce, define, and constrain particular forms of teacher-student practice. The chapter critically analyzes the two major discourses of mainstream educational theory. At the risk of undue simplification, these are characterized as conservative and liberal pedagogical discourses. The chapter develops a discourse appropriate for a radical pedagogy, one that draws heavily upon the works of Paulo Freire and Mikhail Bakhtin. Each discourses presented above as part of a radical pedagogy involves a different view of cultural production, pedagogical analysis, and political action.
