Educational Hegemony and the Phenomenology of Community Participation

Abstract

Critics of education in advanced capitalist societies have assailed schools as being reproducers of the existing patterns of social inequality. A fund a mental concept in understanding this reproductive role of education lies in Gramsci's notion of ' hegemony'. On the other hand, the ' interpretative' perspective on schooling, drawing heavily from phenomenology, sees the possibility of educational and broader social change through the transcendence and redefinition of the realities of day-to-day school life . In this view, through community participation in schools, teachers, students, and parents can develop new ' realities' which concomitantly alter consciousness and generate counter-hegemonic momentum.