Abstract
Schools are an integral part of a community and are often well positioned to provide early education on drug abuse/misuse. Providing drug education as part of the overall curriculum is critical to public health. Through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this research analyzes the dominant curricular discourses in two unique secondary educational settings. The goal is a comparative analysis of the curricula and the policy contexts of their formation. This research is important in that it provides a comparative analysis of explicit curricula in the two contexts. It explores the silences as well as the wider socio-historical and cultural contexts in which curricula are embedded. The ultimate purpose of this study is to further advance our knowledge of these approaches and identify opportunities to further advance curricula that are more responsive and anchored injustice. There are differing views and research regarding curriculum content and what approaches to drug prevention are effective to address the needs of all students and the local community. This research explores the key questions: What does the curricular structure of drug education reveal about the connections between power and forms of knowing? How might we move towards more responsive curricula by comparing secondary education curricula in two different contexts exhibiting different public health approaches to dealing with addiction? The results of this research support that school-based drug education curriculum must move beyond simply informing youth about drugs and drug use to prevent drug use/misuse. In the two contexts that were analyzed, it was revealed that approaches that were multidisciplinary and those that involved youth in the development, implementation, and assessment of the curriculum were more effective. Those that moved beyond the “critical,” in the sense of “engaging,” and in to the “critical,” in the sense of “socio-political consciousness raising,” were also more effective. Portugal’s approach appeared to be more educationally valuable. The comparative analysis revealed that both contexts exhibited strengths and weaknesses and that the lessons learned in each context could provide opportunities for cross-context strengthening.