This dissertation is an exploration of how critical realism can help educational researchers think about the relationships between socio-cultural structures and the text-composing agency of youth in classrooms. By demonstrating how critical realism helps English educators understand the relationship between socio-cultural structures and two Muslim students' text--composing agencies, this work offers important theoretical, methodological and pedagogical implications. Theoretically, Archer's (1995) critical realist Morphogenetic theory can help scholars make sense of the interplay between structure and agency. Methodologically, Fairclough's (2003) critical realist Critical Discourse Analysis allows researchers to examine the interplay between socio-cultural structures and individuals' text-composing agency. What is unique to this work is that I put Archer's theory in conversation with Fairclough's methodology to create a general theoretical-methodological apparatus that can be used by researchers interested in questions of the ways socio-cultural structures affect text-composing agency and vice versa. Pedagogically, I show how an application of this theoretical-methodological approach illumines the interplay of Islamophobic socio-cultural structures and two Muslim students' text-composing agencies. One of the most important findings of this work is that if critical literacy scholars want students' texts to be a determining factor in positive social change, then students' texts need to be combined with the political influence of Corporate Agents (e.g. activist groups that have clear organization and a clear agenda).
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