Locating and applying critical discourse analysis within education policy (original) (raw)

Exploring the intersection of education policy and discourse analysis: An introduction

education policy analysis archives

In this article, we introduce the special issue focused on diverse perspectives to discourse analysis for education policy. This article lays the foundation for the special issue by introducing the notion of a third generation of policy research – a strand of policy research we argue is produced at the intersection of education policy and discourse analysis. We also very briefly discuss discourse analysis writ large, noting that there is no single definition or orientation. Then, we present the six articles included in the special issue, highlighting the ways in which they offer contemporary understandings of the varying applications of discourse analytic perspectives to the study of education policy. We conclude by discussing key policy and methodological implications, as well as future directions for policy scholars working at the intersection of education policy and discourse analysis.

Discourse analysis as theory, method, and epistemology in studies of education policy

Journal of Education Policy, 2018

Discourse has featured in studies of educational policy as an analytic and methodological tool, theoretical frame, realm of implication, and even a foundational definition of educational policy itself (e.g.) Despite the centrality of discourse as a frame for exploring educational policy and its implications, the ways that discourse is defined or operationalized in educational policy research are often left implicit which can lead to murky relations to larger ontoepistemological questions of how we construct findings from data as well as the nature of policy. In this interpretive analysis, we synthesize a corpus of 37 peer-reviewed journal articles that bring together educational policy and analyses of discourse from varying theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to better understand the breadth and scope of how discourse is defined and operationalized in studies of educational policy, including in ways that are sometimes incommensurate with authors' stated theoretical and methodological positions. After first laying the theoretical groundwork for analyses of discourse in the field of educational policy, we then illustrate how discourse analysis is used differently, and sometimes inconsistently, within contested paradigmatic landscapes. We conclude with an argument for discussions across theoretical frameworks and methodological paradigms about how the concept of discourse lends itself to different epistemological vantage points on educational policy.

Critical Discourse Analysis in Education: A Review of the Literature, 2004 to 2012

This article reviews critical discourse analysis scholarship in education research from 2004 to 2012. Our methodology was carried out in three stages. First, we searched educational databases. Second, we completed an analytic review template for each article and encoded these data into a digital spreadsheet to assess macro-trends in the field. Third, we developed sche-mata to interpret the complexity of research design. Our examination of 257 articles reveals trends in research questions, the theories researchers find useful, and the kinds of interactions that capture their attention. We explore areas in the field especially ripe for debate and critique: reflexivity, decon-structive–reconstructive stance toward inquiry, and social action. We compare the findings with an earlier review published in 2005, reflecting on three decades of critical discourse analysis in education research.

Introducing critical policy discourse analysis

Critical Policy Discourse Analysis, 2019

This volume presents ten empirical case studies that demonstrate the added value of integrating Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with Critical Policy Studies (CPS), producing a theoretical and methodological synergy we term Critical Policy Discourse Analysis (CPDA). 1 Our aim is threefold: first, to show how this integration can enrich the conceptualisation-and thus analysis of policy; second, to render explicit the methodological steps whereby such analysis can be operationalised; and, third, to reflect on the distinctive contribution made to both fields when such an integrated approach is applied to actual policy problems. These aims are reflected in the way the chapters are organised. First, each chapter investigates a particular policy-relevant problem which was tackled using a critical discourse analytical approach, with a specific focus on detailed textual analysis. This latter focus reflects an important contribution of CPDA to policy research: namely, an analytical framework capable of capturing, and conceptualising in relation to their socially structuring potential , the fine details of text which are often overlooked in policy analysis, but which have effects on how policy is understood, developed, and implemented. Second, each chapter takes the reader through the methodological decisions made, while making explicit the underlying theoretical assumptions which motivated them. Finally, each chapter reflects on the novel theoretical and empirical insights which were born out of this integrated approach. CDA is an approach to social scientific research which combines detailed analysis of texts with theoretically informed accounts of the phenomena under investigation, in order to identify the processes by which language (re)produces social practices and helps privilege certain ways of doing, thinking, and being over others. It investigates how language figures in the constitution, contestation, and transformation of social problems, and thereby processes of social change. CDA 2 has its origins in linguistics and can best be seen as a problem-oriented interdisciplinary research movement, subsuming a variety of approaches, analytical models and research agendas (Fairclough

Educational policy and classroom discourse practices: Tensions and possibilities

Equity in Discourse for Mathematics Education: Theories, Practices and Policies, 2012

We explore tensions between research on policy that tends to focus at broad scale and at a distance from practice and research on discourse that focuses at small scale and in close proximity to practice. This tension is reflected in how each area conceptualizes equity, with policy researchers focused on access and achievement and discourse researchers focused on power and identity. The chapter is posed as a dialogue, using interviews from policy experts and chapters from discourse researchers in this volume, with the goal of identifying both tensions and possibilities for action. These communities described the difficulty of being sensitive to local contexts while at the same time providing opportunities for students to understand and master dominant mathematical forms of language and reasoning. There was some convergence in the two communities, particularly around the notion of building capacity to enact challenging forms of curriculum and instruction across an array of contexts. Choppin, J., Wagner, D., & Herbel-Eisenmann, B. (2012). Educational policy and classroom discourse practices: Tensions and possibilities. In B. Herbel-Eisenmann, J. Choppin, D. Wagner & D. Pimm (Eds.), Equity in Discourse for Mathematics Education: Theories, Practices and Policies (pp. 205-222): Springer.