Drugs, discourses and education: a critical discourse analysis of a high school drug education text

This paper examines a high school drug education text using critical discourse analysis (CDA) to discern its underlying ideological commitments and political dispositions. I begin with an overview of CDA and why it is a suitable methodology for my work, and then provide a brief history of drug educa...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Discourse (Abingdon, England) England), 2008-06, Vol.29 (2), p.223-238
Main Author: Tupper, Kenneth W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
At Risk Persons
Canada
Content analysis
Decision Making
Discourse Analysis
Drug Abuse
Drug Education
Educational History
Educational Programs
Foreign Countries
Grade 8
Health Education
Health Promotion
High Schools
Ideologies
Junior High School Students
Political Attitudes
Public Health
Secondary education
Social Influences
Syntax
Teaching Guides
Teaching Methods
Textbook bias
Textbook content
Year 8
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper examines a high school drug education text using critical discourse analysis (CDA) to discern its underlying ideological commitments and political dispositions. I begin with an overview of CDA and why it is a suitable methodology for my work, and then provide a brief history of drug education in North America. Next, I consider some of the primary discursive features of a Canadian eighth-grade drug education teacher's manual called Making Decisions. I continue with a focused interrogation of a student 'fact sheet' on hallucinogens, and conclude with some educational implications of my research. Paying careful attention to features such as genre, syntax, interdiscursivity, and lexicalization, I question core assumptions made by both a drug education text and the broader medical, public health, legal and drug policy discourses from which it draws.
ISSN:0159-6306
1469-3739
DOI:10.1080/01596300801966864