Sue Allan Thomas

Recontextualising Policy Discourses: A Bernsteinian Perspective on Policy Interpretation, Translation, Enactment

This paper contributes to critical policy research by theorising one aspect of policy enactment, the meaning making work of a cohort of mid-level policy actors. Specifically, we propose that Basil Bernstein’s work on the structuring of pedagogic discourse, in particular, the concept of recontextualisation, may add to understandings of the policy work of interpretation and translation. Recontextualisation refers to the relational processes of selecting and moving knowledge from one context to another, as well as to the distinctive re-organisation of knowledge as an instructional and regulative or moral discourse. Processes of recontextualisation necessitate an analysis of power and control relations, and therefore add to the Foucauldian theorisations of power that currently dominate the critical policy literature. A process of code elaboration (decoding and recoding) takes place in various recontextualising agencies, responsible for the production of professional development materials, teaching guidelines and curriculum resources. We propose that mid-level policy actors are crucial to the work of policy interpretation and translation because they are engaged in elaborating the condensed codes of policy texts to an imagined logic of teachers’ practical work. To illustrate our theoretical points we draw on data; collected for an Australian research project on the accounts of mid-level policy actors responsible for the interpretation of child protection and safety policies for staff in Queensland schools.

Contesting education policy in the public sphere: media debates over policies for the Queensland school curriculum

This paper investigates the work of media discourses on education policy in public debates over the Queensland school curriculum. It draws on theories of discourse, theories that have recently influenced the field of policy sociology, to outline a conceptualization of policy and media texts as discourses in the public sphere. In so doing, it notes the significant contribution such public discourses on education make to the policy process. The paper employs critical discourse analysis to investigate the discursive constructions of curriculum during one particular policy initiative. The analysis focuses on newspaper debates over the inclusion of a subject called Health and Physical Education (HPE) in the Queensland secondary school curriculum. The paper shows how educational policy issues were discursively constituted and contested through the construction of public discourses on education policy. In particular, it demonstrates how such public discourses worked to construct authoritative voices on educational policy. The paper concludes with a call to teachers and policymakers to seek opportunities to construct an authoritative public voice on issues of education policy.

Taking Teachers Out of the Equation: Constructions of Teachers in Education Policy Documents Over a Ten-year Period

Education policy documents recently have placed great emphasis on teacher quality in the belief that ‘education of the highest quality requires teachers of the highest quality’ (Department of Employment Education Training and Youth Affairs 2000). This paper traces the discourses on teachers constructed in policy documents in order to establish what is meant by ‘teachers of the highest quality’. It employs Critical Discourse Analysis to investigate the discursive construction of teachers’ professional identities in three policy documents released over the last decade. This analysis finds that, despite recognition being given to the importance of teachers in all three documents, teachers’ professional autonomy is effectively curtailed as they are increasingly being ‘taken out of the equation’ in education policy decision-making. The paper concludes with suggestions for ways in which teachers may challenge these constructions and work to reconstruct teachers as active voices in the policy-making process.

Constructing productive post‐school transitions: an analysis of Australian schooling policies

Not having clear pathways, or the social means and personal capacities to make a productive transition from schooling, can inhibit young people’s participation in social and economic life thereafter. This paper advances an analysis of how policy documents associated with senior schooling from across Australian states address the needs of students who are most at risk of not securing productive transitions. The review identifies that many of the goals emphasised the autonomy of students in taking control of their own transitions. However, such individualistic views downplay the importance of the mediating role that access to cultural, social and economic capital is likely to play in the negotiations involved in making a productive transition. Thus, the needs of ‘at‐risk’ students who may have limited access to the forms of capital offering the best support for these negotiations are not well acknowledged in the policies.

Teachers and Public Engagement: An Argument for Rethinking Teacher Professionalism to Challenge Deficit Discourses in the Public Sphere.

In the context of public debates on teacher quality, both media and education policy texts construct deficit discourses about teachers, discourses that work together to inform public, commonsense understandings of teacher quality. This paper explores the interrelationships between discourses on teachers constructed on television and in policies in the Australian policy context. Critical discourse analysis was employed to trace the links between the discourses on teachers constructed in a television situation comedy and discourses in the policy documents that inform the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme. The paper demonstrates the interdiscursivity of media and policy discourses on teacher quality by analysing the ways that the television sitcom constructed a particular version of teachers within the quality policy context. The analysis highlights the need for teachers to challenge these deficit discourses. The paper concludes by arguing for a rethinking of teacher professionalism in ways that include active engagement in public debates on education.

The Construction of Teacher Identities in Educational Policy Documents: a Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a complex eclectic method that has potential to be a valuable tool for critical policy analysis. This article highlights this potential by demonstrating how CDA can be applied to policy texts. That is, it focuses on the processes involved in ‘doing’ critical discourse analysis. In particular, it examines the framework identified by Chouliaraki & Fairclough (1999) as the means by which CDA can be ‘operationalised’ in order to produce ‘theoretically grounded analyses in a wide range of cases’. The framework is outlined and discussed in relation to the construction of teacher identities in educational policies. The article then applies CDA to an analysis of one education policy document to illustrate the framework in operation. In so doing, it addresses the problem of teacher quality, which is analysed in terms of the discursive constructions of teachers’ professional identities. The analysis demonstrates how CDA may be used both as a tool for critical policy analysis and for the analysis of the construction of identities in educational, and other, documents.

Teachers working in culturally diverse classrooms: implications for the development of professional standards and for teacher education

This paper reports the outcomes of a survey to investigate the level of cultural understanding and confidence for teachers working in culturally diverse classrooms. The survey was administered to teachers in primary and secondary schools in an Australian regional city. The aim of analysis was to determine the direction and strength of association of six demographic variables with measures of cultural awareness among teachers and confidence in supporting the learning of students. It found that teacher responses to working in culturally diverse classrooms varied according to levels of familiarity with the cultural groups concerned and with the level of schooling within which the teacher worked. The paper outlines the implications of these findings for the development of professional standards and for teacher education. It discusses how these findings contribute to further investigations into the extent to which teachers understand cultural diversity and their confidence as literacy instructors.

RECONFIGURING THE PUBLIC SPHERE: IMPLICATIONS FOR ANALYSES OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY

ABSTRACT:  This paper outlines a case for the reconfiguration of the public sphere as discursive space, arguing that such a reconfiguration better enables investigations into public debates on education. The paper focuses on one such investigation, which studied one newspapers reporting of a review of the school curriculum in Queensland, Australia. It employs Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse the interrelationships between policy discourses and the discourses about the review that were constructed in the print media. The paper shows how the dynamic structure of the public sphere enabled discursive connections to be made across sites in order to privilege a shared public discourse on education policy, schools and teachers. In so doing, it demonstrates the capacity of the public sphere to define educational issues and identities in particular ways.

Leading for quality: questions about quality and leadership in Australia

This article is situated in the context of recent policies for teacher quality in Australia. Discourses on quality have crossed many domains of public policy, including education. A feature of these discourses has been an emphasis on improving teacher quality and raising professional standards. The article uses critical discourse analysis to explore the implications of quality discourses for educational leadership. In so doing, it analyses how recent educational policies construct discourses on quality and professional standards, discourses which position educational leaders in particular – often contradictory – ways. Such positionings offer different ways of understanding leaders and how best they might lead for quality. The article concludes by raising questions about quality and leadership, questions that highlight the need to rethink educational leadership within a quality policy framework.

Who Speaks for Education? One newspaper's reporting of a review of the Queensland school curriculum

This paper is a case study of a series of newspaper reports on education. It is part of a larger project, which examines the public debate on education, where the media is identified as the means of presenting the debate to the public. The case study presents an analysis, which is concerned with the definition of the situation in the print medias discourses on education, especially with the generation of meaning through particular representations within these discourses. It focuses on the identification and representation of the people considered by the paper to be of importance to the educational initiative and on their positioning within the social relations of the discourse. In particular, the analysis explores the authority the news reports give to these participants to speak on education. As such, it highlights the contcstation and negotiation that is always a part of any politics of representation. This analysis emphasises the role of discursive practices in the construction of ideological understandings of reality. Such an emphasis necessitates the adoption of a critical discourse analysis in order to identify the ideological dimensions of the debate on education in the public arena. The paper now turns to a discussion of critical discourse analysis before presenting the analysis of the news reports.