A study examined from a feminist poststructuralist perspective the discourses available in a classroom using a critical pedagogy, based on a belief that teaches need to make it possible for their students to question the social world constructed in texts. The teacher of an Australian junior primary classroom (with students age five to eight) took as her starting point a critically-based literature advocating the introduction of a critical discourse into classrooms. The teacher also took into account the impact of poststructuralist prediction of multiplicity, contradiction and possibility on research and pedagogical positions. To scrutinize the discursive practices around this critical pedagogy, the teacher/researcher made multiple readings around two fiction texts, revealing both the contradictory discourses and the possibilities available in a classroom where a critical pedagogy with a feminist poststructuralist emphasis underpinned reading instruction. Results indicated that: (1) the critical discourse the teacher made available was taken up differentially by girls and by boys; (2) students' existing practices associated with old positions concerning the meaning in the texts were preserved; and (3) some girls did take up new, socially-critical positions. Findings suggest both problematic aspects and possibilities for change of introducing into the classroom a new discourse which both problematized existing discursive practices; and where, at the same time, these existing discourses were taken for granted. (Contains 37 references. Appendixes present both texts, an entry in a planning journal, a classroom chart, samples of students' writing and drawing, and a transcript of a discussion of a text.) (RS)