Theorizing Critical Discourse Theory and Analysis for Investigating Mathematics Classrooms

Abstract

Critical Discourse Theory and its elements, discourse, language, power, ideology, subject positioning, struggle and discursive practice, allow a critical understanding of the issues of the working of power and its contestation, and the processes of inclusion and exclusion from social contexts such as mathematics classrooms. Critical Discourse Analysis as a method brings together the theoretical understandings of critical discourse theory to analyse social contexts as well as the language of research participants’ accounts. It enables an understanding of how power, discourse, and ideology are realised in accounts about mathematics learning in middle years secondary classrooms and in a Youth Reconnected Program at one Technical and Further Education Institute.