Identity, Knowledge, and Power: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Morality and Ethics in U.S. Teacher Education Textbooks

This study examines how morality and ethics are discursively constructed in 43 U.S. teacher education textbooks, focusing on the intertwined themes of identity, knowledge, and power. Drawing on Fairclough’s three-dimensional critical discourse analysis, the study analyzes how textbook discourses could shape ethical teacher subjectivity. Findings show that textbooks predominantly construct teachers as moral role models and ethicists-in-community. Ethical knowledge is legitimized through an integrated repertoire of professional codes, legal frameworks, moral dilemmas, and developmental theories. Power operates through normative professional standards and disciplinary practices of reflection that encourage self-regulation within institutional boundaries. While these discourses promote ethical professionalism, they largely privilege micro-ethical concerns and marginalize sociopolitical macro-ethics and systemic power relations. The study argues for textbooks that more deliberately function as social practices, cultivating critical moral agency and ethical resilience so that teachers are prepared not only to navigate existing systems but also to question and, when necessary, challenge them.