Revitalizing Critical Discourses in Social Education: Opportunities for a More Complexified (Un)Knowing

Abstract

The author seeks to revitalize the interests of social educators in the value of using critical, postmodern discourses for rich comprehension of and productive scholarly research in our field. These discourses (a) challenge existing understanding within social education and the knowledge and knower they help produce; and (b) imagine more complex, nuanced, and critical ways with which to conduct research and narrate findings. The primary foci include an examination of the role and impact of prevalent grand narratives, myths, discourses, and practices, as well as their underlying power relations. This raises questions about forms of knowledge, knowing, identity, and the subjectivity they help engender and celebrate—whether in disciplinary, curricular, and pedagogical encounters in classrooms or in research conducted in/about them. An overview of critical discourses is followed by an examination of their potential engagement in disciplines comprising the social studies. The author then moves to issues of gender and race, concluding with an exploration of critical methodologies and a discussion of the possibilities and implications they afford scholars in critical research.

Keywords:

• postmodernism
• poststructuralism
• feminism
• history
• geography
• economics
• critical methodology