Abstract:
The researcher examines the alignment between a teacher’s pedagogical justification for student learning and that of the American institutional discourse of education by studying the relationship between the localized rhetorical choices of three teachers’ instructional speech and the tacit institutional discourses as observed in the teacher’s linguistic delivery in the classroom. Through institutional critique, the researcher historicizes education to reveal the original aims of education in antiquity as a moral endeavor, then establishes the American educational institutional discourse as one that privileges industry and economy. By utilizing rhetorical analysis to inform critical pedagogy, the researcher asserts that teachers can reclaim their pedagogical beliefs that are currently being dominated by institutional discourses and actively make changes within their institutions.
