Resistance and Contestation

In curriculum studies, resistance and contestation refer more generally to the cultivation of dissenting positions on what is taught, the perspective from which it is taught, how it is taught, and how learners might be inculcated into challenging or refusing to accept dominant perspectives and ideologies.

In working toward a theory of resistance that informs curriculum studies, Henry Giroux makes the crucial distinction with oppositional behavior that he regards as being located too much in individual acts of contestation and defiance, and as such, miss the larger political sources of causation. The genesis of oppositional behavior is seen as residing in individual pathologies and deficits students bring with them to schools personally or as a result of family background or upbringing. Resistance, on the other hand, ...