David Hyatt

‘Yes, a very good point!’: a critical genre analysis of a corpus of feedback commentaries on Master of Education assignments

This paper seeks to use a corpus-based analysis of assessment commentaries on Masters level assignments to shed light on the guidance practices of those who provide feedback. The analysis offers a set of functional categories that emerge from the corpus and uses these to consider the degree of transparency evident in the commentaries. Based on this analysis, the paper discusses implications for feedback providers and offers suggestions for diminishing power imbalances and for re-placing the student writer at the centre of academic discourse. In doing so, I hope to enhance the value placed on individuals’ academic contributions and facilitate the process of induction into the academic discourse community, through a notion of critical inclusion, as opposed to a prescriptive notion of convention adoption.

Time for a change: a critical discoursal analysis of synchronic context with diachronic relevance

This article offers a framework for the analysis of temporal context, an analysis of synchronic context with diachronic relevance. It seeks to look at the way in which temporal context operates on a number of levels to help construct the ways in which individuals and groups understand their social worlds. Aspects considered include the immediate and medium-term sociopolitical contexts, the contemporary sociopolitical individuals, organizations and structures and the more long-term temporal context which includes the various assumptions of order, structures of inclusion and exclusion and generally how a society legitimates itself and achieves its social identity. In addition to the analytical tool considered, the article also posits some methodological implications for research in this area.

A Critical Literacy Frame for UK secondary education contexts

Abstract This paper presents a pedagogical, analytical and heuristic tool for the critical analysis of texts, the Critical Literacy Frame, developed through a critical textual and discourse analysis of the genre of broadcast adversarial political interviewing, further informed by questionnaires and interviews with key informants. It is grounded in a social-constructionist orientation to language, and is underpinned theoretically by insights from Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Literacy. The potential for such a frame, in the context of UK secondary education, particularly with reference to A level English Language and Citizenship, is considered and recommendations for pedagogy, curriculum, teacher-education, policy and further complementary research are offered.

Stakeholders’ perceptions of IELTS as an entry requirement for higher education in the UK

This project explores stakeholders’ perceptions of the role of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) in the admissions processes of UK higher education (HE) institutions. The term ‘stakeholders’ here refers to HE academic and administrative staff responsible for the acceptance of students whose first language is not English onto academic programmes in UK HE institutions. It draws on two pieces of empirical study: a large-scale questionnaire survey of those responsible for admissions decisions in a range of HE institutions in the pre- and post-1992 sectors, and a smaller scale interview-based qualitative study of a subset of these participants. The empirical data gathered offers insights into the processes of standard-setting in various contexts, highlights tensions between standard-setting and a growing economic imperative to recruit, and identifies a niche for development opportunities in raising stakeholders’ awareness of the content and process of IELTS to enhance the quality of decision-making in this area. The study offers a number of recommendations for the designers/producers of IELTS and for HE institutions, and also highlights a number of directions for further complementary research.

The Critical Higher Education Policy Discourse Analysis Framework

Abstract This chapter offers a pedagogical, analytical and heuristic framework for the critical analysis of higher education policy texts, and of the processes and motivations behind their articulations, grounded in considerations of relationships and flows between language, power and discourse. Theoretically the framework draws on critical discourse analysis, which provides a systematic framework for exegesis, analysis and interpretation, uncloaking the ways in which language (and other semiotic modes) work within discourse as agents and actors in the realisation, construction and perception of relations of power. The framework itself comprises two elements: one concerned with contextualising and one with deconstructing. The contextualisation element of the frame comprises three parts: temporal context, policy levers/drivers and warrant. The second element of deconstruction engages with text and discourse using a number of analytical lenses and tools derived from critical discourse analysis and critical literacy analysis.

Teacher education in France under the Hollande government: reconstructing and reinforcing the republic

Successive republican governments in France have constructed a complex educational context, which is rhetorically committed to a myth of provision of educational equality of opportunity whilst in practical terms it is characterised by a system focused on the production and reproduction of elites. This article aims to consider the political drivers and levers that are transforming French teacher education during the current challenging economic, social and cultural context. It uses a relatively new methodological approach to the analysis of policy evolution and development by applying a critical analysis of discourse, which considers the ways in which teacher education policy is ‘reproduced and reworked’. This is achieved through the discourse analysis of a policy speech made in October 2013 by the then Minister of Education, Vincent Peillon, contextualised by comparisons with reforms enacted by the previous Sarkozy government (masterisation). The article, therefore, utilises a systematic framework that allows analysis at the levels of contextualisation and deconstruction of the text and so highlights developments to date in the arguably unique approach of the Hollande government, driven by the relationship between the republican state and the education system in France. The article also considers how reaction following the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015 afforded opportunities to assert new validity for the teacher education policy espoused within Peillon’s speech.