This paper argues that classroom discussions are important sites of investigation, not for the purpose of identifying and prescribing effective discussion strategies, but for understanding why particular discursive strategies tend to dominate classroom talk and what might be done to alter such practices. The paper is grounded in feminist postmodernist thinking, which seeks to continue the struggle against sexism while developing new paradigms of social criticism. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section explains what is meant by discursive practices and then identifies predominant discursive practices associated with classroom discussions of texts. In the second section work on text-based classroom discussions is examined for instances of how ingrained, gendered ways of thinking have perpetuated particular discursive practices. The third section explores ways of expanding possibilities so as to understand more fully the complexities of learning from and about text-based classroom talk. Contains 67 references. (RS)