Ideology critique, when applied by educational research to the ideational content of curriculum materials, has evoked negative connotations of partiality and bias, misrepresentation of social reality, and ultimately, of untruth. This thesis attempts to assert a more positive sense of 'meaning production' for curriculum critique and shift emphasis away from representation towards signification. It reviews the management of questions of ideology and education by the sociology of school knowledge and curriculum research. It is argued that strategies of ideology critique, along structuralist and culturalist lines of difference, have inadequately addressed issues of critical subjectivity, hegemony, and social transformation that is posed by radical education. Four curriculum studies of textbook analysis are discussed in detail, in terms of their attachment to the sociology of school knowledge and in terms of the 'bias and balance' discourse that they produce. Analysis of the case study material also indicates that balance is not necessarily built-in as a result of a commitment to provide diverse expert opinion. This has implications for those practices of curriculum criticism and curriculum construction which attempt to locate and redress bias as well as promote critical thinking.