Literacy and teachers/students identities through the 2003 Curricula in Language Teaching

The way in which a society selects and evaluates knowledge and especially school knowledge can provide information on how power and control are distributed in that society (Berstein, 1971a). Such a case study of the distribution of power in the school space is highlighted by the analysis of the institutional texts of 2003 for the Modern Greek Language in the Juniors High School that are in force until today, namely the Interdisciplinary Unified Curriculum Framework (DEPPS) and the Detailed Curriculum ( APS). The study of the institutional texts focuses on three sub-parameters: a. the variety of discourses, that is social practices for verbal exchange associated with ways of thinking, ideologies, social values as they appear in these texts as a result of linguistic approaches, b. the approach of literacy in its critical-emancipatory perspective i.e. the attempt to emancipate individuals through the criticism of social reality (search for evidence that confirms its presence or absence) and c. the identities of the subjects that develop as a result of the discourses and the literacy type promoted by the texts. The conclusions of this study are that the predominance of regulative discourse as a way of transferring knowledge in the classroom as well as the instrumentalization of knowledge deprive social subjects of the possibility to develop emancipatory discourse and the prospect of liberation from dominant discourses.