Toward Poststructural Possibilities for Deconstructing the School-to-Prison Pipeline

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Equity, Gender, and Our Youth

Abstract

An Aboriginal male in the province of Saskatchewan is more likely to become incarcerated than to finish high school. This paper presents findings from a study on how educators’ discourses both legitimize and resist Aboriginal youth criminalization, thus considering the contributions offered by poststructural theories for studying the connections between education and incarceration. The author locates these considerations in the context of the endeavor to interrupt educational disadvantages amongst Aboriginal students. Engaging with poststructural theorizations on inequality, and employing Foucauldian concepts of discourse, power and knowledge, the findings of this paper demonstrate poststructural approaches present new possibilities for conceptualizing, studying, and dismantling the school to prison pipeline.

Author

• Amanda Michelle Gebhard, University of Toronto - OISE