A critical discourse analysis of sexuality education in the Australian curriculum

This article examines the sexuality education component of the national Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (AC:HPE) with a focus on sexuality education discourses. A critical discourse analysis explored official AC:HPE documents in relation to sexuality education; the sexuality education discourses present within these documents; teacher roles and expectations associated with each discourse; and Australia’s broader social context in relation to education. Findings reveal that the AC:HPE emphasises a teacher-facilitated approach to sexuality education, which contrasts with teacher-centred work dominating the field prior to its release. This approach is in line with recent shifts in education towards strengths-based learning in which students are encouraged to think critically about issues. Despite these emphases, and while the AC:HPE is meant to be used flexibly as a guideline or framework, certain ambiguities within it may leave teachers’ roles open to interpretation and practices therefore unchanged or undisputed.     

Ideology,rationality and reproduction in education: a critical discourse analysis

In undertaking a critical discourse analysis of the professed aims and objectives of one of the most influential curricula in the teaching of thinking, this article foregrounds issues of power and ideology latent in curricular discourses of rationality. Specifically, it documents the subtle but powerful ways in which political and class commitments are (re-)produced in the forms of thinking that are valued in schools and societies. Through a nuanced analysis of the language features of the text and the social and political ideologies that underpin it, the article argues that such curricula engage in shaping our common-sense understandings of what thinking and rationality is and should be in instrumental forms that both connect to neoliberal prerogatives and that facilitate the social reproduction of a particular fraction of the middle class.     

A critical discourse analysis of Gisela's family story: a construal of deportation,illegal immigrants,and literacy

In this paper, I use critical discourse analysis to analyze a student's narrative about the arrest, incarceration, and deportation of her mother to Mexico. The student, Gisela, was a fifth grader in my classroom during the 2008/2009 school year, and I encouraged the students to collect family stories from their relatives. Gisela created this story, and she wrote and illustrated this with the help of her father, student peers, and me. I draw on Gloria Anzaldúa's constructs of nepantla and nepantlera, narrative analysis, and systemic functional linguistics to show how Gisela's construed this story to create a powerful and creative narrative that disrupted autonomous forms of literacy along with the excluding and damaging discourses circulating about immigrants in our community.     

Integrating social activity theory and critical discourse analysis: a multilayered methodological model for examining knowledge mediation in mentoring

This study suggests an integrative qualitative methodological framework for capturing complexity in mentoring activity. Specifically, the model examines how historical developments of a discipline direct mentors’ mediation of professional knowledge through the language that they use. The model integrates social activity theory and a framework of critical discourse analysis to guide the data collection, analysis and interpretation processes. Drawing on the case of mentoring in Arts Education, we describe and discuss the discursive character of the interactions between content and pedagogy in mentoring activity, as they grow out of the larger historical groundings of participants’ practice.     

The critical policy discourse analysis frame: helping doctoral students engage with the educational policy analysis

This paper addresses an issue of increasing significance in the context of taught educational doctorates and argues that this may have wider applicability for doctoral students across a range of social science disciplines. It identifies the need to engage with policy analysis as a key element of such programmes and attempts to address students' concerns over a lack of practical approaches to do so by offering an analytical framework drawing on critical discourse analysis. This paper highlights the affordances of a taught doctorate context to consider the potential for more collaborative community approaches to doctoral pedagogies through reflecting upon the way the frame was introduced and used by one group of EdD students. In doing so, this paper offers both a practical analytical tool for doctoral students but also a pedagogical approach grounded in an invitation to dialogue and induction into the academic discourse community, through a notion of critical inclusion.     

简评批评话语分析在跨文化交际学研究中的应用

简要述评近几年批评话语分析在跨文化交际学研究中的应用,讨论从批评的视角对英美领导人在跨文化交际语境中所作的英文演讲进行分析和研究的必要性,评介跨文化交际学和批评话语分析研究领域中的新动向,并就如何深化跨文化交际语境演讲的批评分析研究提出了3点建议.     

Beyond the poverty of national security: toward a critical human security perspective in educational policy

This article examines the intersecting logics of human capital and national security underpinning the corporate school reform movement in the United States. Taking a 2012 policy report by the Council on Foreign Relations as an entry point, it suggests that these logics are incoherent not only on their own narrow instrumental terms, but also more importantly in terms of progressive ideals of human and educational flourishing. The article proceeds to draw on discussions within the fields of international relations and critical security studies in order to think through what it might mean to reframe educational policy within the terms of human security rather than human capital and national security. It further explores both the possibilities and distinct limitations of extant human security discourses and policies in relation to global neoliberal governance and biopolitics. The article concludes by advocating for a critical human security framework in educational policy along three conceptual lines: (1) A Human beyond Human Capital; (2) Symbiotic Parallelism; and (3) Altersecurity. Ultimately, it suggests that human security for educational flourishing might offer insight into transcending the idea of security altogether.     

Empowering discourse: discourse analysis as method and practice in the sociology classroom

Collaborative learning and critical pedagogy are widely recognized as ‘empowering’ pedagogies for higher education. Yet, the practical implementation of both has a mixed record. The question, then, is: How could collaborative and critical pedagogies be empowered themselves? This paper makes a primarily theoretical case for discourse analysis (DA) as a form of classroom practice that provides a structured framework for collaborative and critical pedagogies in higher education, with a special reference to sociology classroom practice. I develop a tripartite scheme for building a framework for sociological imagination that is, first, sensitive to the discursive aspects of social reality (learning about DA). Second, I illustrate the use of DA as pedagogical tool and classroom practice (learning with DA). Third, I discuss how discourse analytical ideas can be used in evaluating classroom interaction and how these reflexive insights can be used to enhance student empowerment (learning through DA).     

Realising the school science curriculum

Abstract

This article identifies historical, pedagogical and epistemological problems which distance the school science curriculum from social questions, and issues of social justice more specifically. Drawing on a critical realist approach it addresses these problems and aims to demonstrate that social justice lies at the heart of inquiry in science in schools.     

Defining and seeking to identify critical Internet literacy: a discourse analysis of fifth‐graders' Internet search and evaluation activity

Pedagogic focus is shifting increasingly from teaching students to search the Internet efficiently to encouraging critical Internet literacy, but this paper argues that these more complex and subtle skills are both challenging to teach and difficult to identify. The paper presents an analysis of the discourse of triads of fifth graders undertaking an Internet search task that emphasised decisions relating to the trustworthiness and relevance of websites. The analysis uses two lenses – the Vygotskian concept of obuchenie and Mercer's notion of ‘inter‐thinking’ – to help identify discourse markers that could support teachers in identifying and teaching critical Internet literacy. More work is needed, but it is argued that if our goal is to develop critical Internet literacy, the concept of obuchenie helps us to understand the socio‐cognitive prerequisites of group learning in Internet searching tasks, while the concept of ‘interthinking’ offers us a distribution mechanism that can be applied in helping students acquire the skills of independent and critical analysis as they carry out those tasks.     

Disrupting neoliberal discourse in critical sustainability education: a qualitative analysis of intentional language framing

While education for sustainability is a critical task that is gaining ground in a plethora of educational contexts, it is frequently rendered ineffective in the face of neoliberal practice and discourse. Here we examine the pervasive impacts of neoliberalism on education for sustainability, looking specifically at discursive formations that shape our understandings of humans in and as nature. Throughout ecological texts, root metaphors carry forward specific cultural histories that serve neoliberal agendas by positioning nature as commodity and humans as consumers. We sought to systematically understand how manipulating a root metaphor in the creation of instructional texts might disrupt neoliberal discourse and foster critical sustainability. Using a thought-listing technique to explore student response patterns qualitatively allowed for insights into the power of discourse in educational contexts. Data support the notion that intentional framing may be a powerful tool in education for sustainability. We argue that language and discourse are necessary and effective grounds for change if sustainability is to take root.     

Physical education for health and wellbeing: a discourse analysis of Scottish physical education curricular documentation

This paper provides an analysis of the discourses associated with physical education in Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence. We implement a poststructural perspective in order to identify the discourses that underpin the physical education sections of the Curriculum for Excellence ‘health and well-being’ documentation. Discourses related to physical activity and health are particularly prominent, along with a related concern with motor skill development. Our focus lies with the ways in which these discourses are likely to be taken up and deployed within Scottish educational establishments. The paper thus explores the ways in which these discourses might ‘work’ to produce specific effects on practitioners and pupils. This involves speculating about how practitioners and students might engage in specific practices relative to these discourses. We conclude that the discourses identified lend themselves to interpretation and negotiation in multiple ways in the context of Scottish physical education, with specific consequences for the experiences and subjectivities of practitioners and children.     

在多模态和批评话语分析双重视野下的卡梅伦就职演说

本文以社会、权力关系和意识形态为轴心,把卡梅伦就职演说置于多模态和批评话语分析的双重视野之下,进行了图像分析、声音和动作分析、及物性分析、情态分析和互文性分析,证实了意识形态弥漫在话语、图像、声音和动作诸多方面。从而发觉卡梅伦的就职演说简短有力、令人信服地向人们宣传了他的思想和意识形态。     

Critical discourse analysis and inclusive educational policies: the power to exclude

The legislative shift towards an inclusive education policy in Cyprus has allegedly been fragmented and contradictory. The textual hybridity of the ostensibly more inclusive policy documents prevents the realization of an inclusive discourse. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is proposed as an emancipatory research tool that has the potential to destabilize the authoritarian discourses entrenched in educational policy agendas, thereby facilitating the linguistic and, by implication, conceptual reinstatement of inclusion as a notion that unequivocally advocates the protection of the human rights of children with special educational needs (SEN). In the first section, the article concentrates on the theoretical perspectives of CDA within the context of inclusive education policymaking. For illustration purposes, CDA is used here to expose the power/knowledge grid and its subjugating attributes, enshrined in two official legislative documents. The aim is to answer the following questions: (1) In what ways does the legislative document construct and sustain asymmetrical power relations? (2) In what ways are children with SEN constructed and positioned? and (3) In what ways are children’s human rights silenced? The next section is given over to the criticisms of CDA, whilst the final section raises some issues and identifies some problems in relation to the value of CDA as an emancipatory research tool.     

Teachers’ democratic assignment: a critical discourse analysis of teacher education policies in Ireland and Sweden

ABSTRACT

The needs of a globalized economy are rapidly changing what is legitimated as school knowledge and values, and calling up new understandings of teachers’ role in stimulating democratic spaces. We have termed this Teachers’ Democratic Assignment. We examine changing notions of teachers’ democratic assignment in Ireland and Sweden using a Critical Discourse Analysis. We tested our hypothesis that teachers’ democratic assignment has changed in unprecedented ways using an analysis of policy documents in teacher education. Our findings reported a substantive converging paradigm shift from a predominantly progressive (reconstructivist) curriculum discourse where democracy was seen as inextricably linked to everyday practice in the early years of this century, to a more essentialist (perennialist) discourse in recent times. The findings will have interest for a wider audience and have implications for the role of democracy in teacher education as well as the question of education as a social responsibility for a vibrant democracy.     

Parents are not born,they are made: a critical discourse analysis of an educational magazine in Flanders (Belgium)

Central to this article is a case study of one particular governmental instrument in Flanders, the educational magazine ‘Klasse voor Ouders’ (Klasse for Parents). This popular magazine aims to provide information for and communication with parents as one of the target groups in the educational field. Despite the claimed formal and neutral character, in this study, we assume that ‘Klasse voor Ouders’ plays a larger role by contributing to the (re-)organisation of the public debate. We suggest that through the ‘order of discourse’ and thus, through what is said and written, an educational reality is created in which parents and the government are ‘positioned’ and are asked to reflect on themselves and to act in a well-defined way. By means of a critical discourse analysis in line with Fairclough, we illustrate how parents are understood as having a continuous ‘drive’ for improving the quality of their own parenting practice while the government is positioned as in charge of and in control for creating a kind of ‘parental learning community’.     

The cultural politics of national testing and test result release policy in South Korea: a critical discourse analysis

This paper examines the ideological construction of educational discourses embedded within the South Korean print media. Significantly, these discourses have recently promoted the resurrection of a sweeping national testing and test results release policy. Through careful examination of the “test plus release” policy, the authors show how the government has achieved hegemonic power by shaping public opinion through the national testing contexts. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of educational policy texts from the government and top 10 print media sources, this paper analyses how discourses on “accountability”, “the right to know” and “the fairness of the tests” have been produced, reproduced and recontextualized to favour particular perspectives. The authors also examine how government and influential print media discourses interact with political and cultural factors such as “acclaiming the evaluative state”, “education fever” and “meritocratic beliefs” to achieve public consent for the new “test plus release” policy.     

A critical discourse analysis of teachers’ views on LGBT literature

This article presents a thread of discussion posted to a web-based forum in the context of a children's literature course in one teacher education program in the USA. Participants in the virtual discussion include three preservice elementary teachers and the course instructor (author) on the subject of bringing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) literature into the elementary classroom. Classroom teachers who lead discussions about race, gender, class, sexuality and inequality are encouraged to create and maintain a safe environment for dialogue. In this article, the author explores how the need to maintain a culture of safety around discussions of sexuality shaped the participants’ views on teaching LGBT literature written for children. Applying the tools of critical discourse analysis, the author demonstrates how events in the discussion unfolded that left normative constructions of sexuality unexamined.     

Schooling the mean girl: a critical discourse analysis of teacher resource materials

This paper is a critical discourse analysis of teacher resource materials about girl bullying. The ‘mean girl’ phenomenon has been widely taken up as one of the current key narratives about schools and school girls. This paper argues for the importance of understanding the origins of this discourse within behavioural psychology, which coined the term ‘relational aggression’ to describe what is purported to be a uniquely female form of aggression. Our analysis problematises the ways in which this discourse reinforces gendered binaries and pathologises girls’ aggression. We trace the emergence of an ‘expert culture', exemplified by the texts we analyse, which disseminates this discourse and limits the range of ways in which girls’ aggression and friendships may be understood. We critique the raced and classed ways in which these texts establish hegemonic forms of white, middle-class girlhood. We show how the texts draw on neo-liberal ideologies of idealised forms of subjectivity and function as a mechanism for shaping these subjectivities within schools.