Commercialising education – A multimodal analysis

Renee Morrison; Theo van Leeuwen

doi:10.1080/17405904.2026.2690588

Back

Commercialising education – A multimodal analysis

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Commercialising education – A multimodal analysis

Renee Morrison and Theo van Leeuwen

Critical Discourse Studies, Vol.Advanced access

25-Jun-2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2026.2690588

Files and links (1)

pdf

Commercialising education A multimodal analysis1.76 MBDownload View

Published Version (Advanced Access) Open Access CC BY V4.0

Abstract

critical multimodal discourse analysis

petro-pedagogy

Australian curriculum

corporate education

critical literacy

This paper investigates a set of interactive resources for mining and energy education produced by the Australian mining industry and endorsed by Australia's Education Department. Building on Eaton, E., & Day, N. (2020. Petro-pedagogy: Fossil fuel interests and the obstruction of climate justice in public education. Environmental Education Research, 26(4), 457–473) ‘petro-pedagogy’, the study employs critical multimodal discourse analysis to show that these ‘Oresome interactives’, while often educational, disproportionately promote the interests of the mining industry. The resources represent the industry as an inevitable and positive part of modern Australian living, present the environmental impacts of mining as minimal and represent alternative energy sources as unstable, rare and unsightly. The paper concludes by calling for caution with regard to the use of such ‘gifted’ educational resources.

Details

Title: Commercialising education – A multimodal analysis
Authors: Renee Morrison (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast
Theo van Leeuwen - University of Southern Denmark
Publication details: Critical Discourse Studies, Vol.Advanced access
Publisher: Routledge
DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2026.2690588
ISSN: 1740-5912
Copyright note: © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Data Availability: All raw data is publicly available via the website: https://www.oresomeresources.com/.
Organisation Unit: Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre; School of Education and Tertiary Access
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991239198502621
Output Type: Journal article

Metrics

1 Record Views

See more details