Abstract Ongoing tension surrounding values education in both the wider community and among politicians and academics, as well as the plethora of values education programs on the commercial market, all contribute to a number of competing values education discourses that can make it difficult for individual classroom teachers to make choices regarding what and how to teach values. The aim of the current study was to contribute to an understanding of discourses of values education in Australia and investigate the way in which the Discourse models of government policy documents and classroom teacher Discourse models of values education intersect in terms of both alignment and fragmentation. In addressing the problem of how teachers choose to bring clarity to competing values education discourses, this research comprises two parts. The first part is an analysis of a key policy text, the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (2005). The second part focuses on fourteen interviews with seven primary school classroom teachers conducted at different times during one school term. Each teacher was interviewed twice. The interviews were treated as objects of analysis and not just as an information source. The informal theories that underpin the policy and interview texts are analysed through James Paul Gee’s (2005) lens of “Discourse models”. This is a critical discourse approach to analysing a social phenomenon, with analytic focus placed on the language in the texts, as well as the localised and broader social context in which the language is situated. The way in which the policy and interview texts functioned strategically was analysed. The Discourse models evident in the texts were then identified through the use of ‘storylines’ as an analytic tool. In identifying Discourse models, insight was gained into how the official policy and the teacher participants in the study conceptualised values education. Analysis of the policy document showed how the text acted strategically to build legitimacy and the appearance of consensus surrounding the approach to values education advocated in the document. The storyline that emerged was one of the Australian Federal Government as a ‘hero’ intervening in values education to save young people who are at moral risk in the 21st century. Analysis of the interview transcripts showed how these texts also acted strategically to build legitimacy and the appearance that each participant’s approach to values education was right, normal and needed. A similar storyline emerged in the interview texts, where young people were in need of rescuing due to the moral peril of current times but it was the teacher participants who were now in the role of ‘hero’. The teacher participants in the study showed that they called upon a multiplicity of social roles, everything they were as moral beings, in their efforts to rescue students. The results indicate that there is both alignment and fragmentation in the Discourse models identified in both the policy and interview texts. Values education was conceived of in largely behavioural terms, where values were fixed, and change towards these value norms was focused on the individual behaviour of the student. Alignment centred on a dominant ‘salvation’ story in the texts that regarded values education as a way to rescue students from moral peril. This master model of the salvation story was fractured, however, by the experiences of the classroom teachers in the study. Most poignant was that not all students were able to be rescued despite the best of professed intentions. There are several implications emerging from these findings. First, the explicit move towards fixed values norms has exclusionary effects. Second, the focus on changing the behaviour of students as individuals ignores systemic levels of oppression. Third, and overall, the didactic teaching of values creates tensions over the perceived interference of the state in the lives of young people. Recommendations emerging from the study include that teachers be given increased opportunities to become more aware of their own values systems, the impact of these in the classroom; and develop their understanding of the broader social structures in which values education in classrooms is situated. This awareness is a necessary complement to the official discourses of values education in Australia in order to mitigate the potential exclusionary effects of policy. 130105 Primary Education 35%, 160506 Education policy 35%, 1399 Other Education 30%

Abstract Ongoing tension surrounding values education in both the wider community and among politicians and academics, as well as the plethora of values education programs on the commercial market, all contribute to a number of competing values education discourses that can make it difficult for individual classroom teachers to make choices regarding what and how to teach values. The aim of the current study was to contribute to an understanding of discourses of values education in Australia and investigate the way in which the Discourse models of government policy documents and classroom teacher Discourse models of values education intersect in terms of both alignment and fragmentation. In addressing the problem of how teachers choose to bring clarity to competing values education discourses, this research comprises two parts. The first part is an analysis of a key policy text, the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (2005). The second part focuses on fourteen interviews with seven primary school classroom teachers conducted at different times during one school term. Each teacher was interviewed twice. The interviews were treated as objects of analysis and not just as an information source. The informal theories that underpin the policy and interview texts are analysed through James Paul Gee’s (2005) lens of “Discourse models”. This is a critical discourse approach to analysing a social phenomenon, with analytic focus placed on the language in the texts, as well as the localised and broader social context in which the language is situated. The way in which the policy and interview texts functioned strategically was analysed. The Discourse models evident in the texts were then identified through the use of ‘storylines’ as an analytic tool. In identifying Discourse models, insight was gained into how the official policy and the teacher participants in the study conceptualised values education. Analysis of the policy document showed how the text acted strategically to build legitimacy and the appearance of consensus surrounding the approach to values education advocated in the document. The storyline that emerged was one of the Australian Federal Government as a ‘hero’ intervening in values education to save young people who are at moral risk in the 21st century. Analysis of the interview transcripts showed how these texts also acted strategically to build legitimacy and the appearance that each participant’s approach to values education was right, normal and needed. A similar storyline emerged in the interview texts, where young people were in need of rescuing due to the moral peril of current times but it was the teacher participants who were now in the role of ‘hero’. The teacher participants in the study showed that they called upon a multiplicity of social roles, everything they were as moral beings, in their efforts to rescue students. The results indicate that there is both alignment and fragmentation in the Discourse models identified in both the policy and interview texts. Values education was conceived of in largely behavioural terms, where values were fixed, and change towards these value norms was focused on the individual behaviour of the student. Alignment centred on a dominant ‘salvation’ story in the texts that regarded values education as a way to rescue students from moral peril. This master model of the salvation story was fractured, however, by the experiences of the classroom teachers in the study. Most poignant was that not all students were able to be rescued despite the best of professed intentions. There are several implications emerging from these findings. First, the explicit move towards fixed values norms has exclusionary effects. Second, the focus on changing the behaviour of students as individuals ignores systemic levels of oppression. Third, and overall, the didactic teaching of values creates tensions over the perceived interference of the state in the lives of young people. Recommendations emerging from the study include that teachers be given increased opportunities to become more aware of their own values systems, the impact of these in the classroom; and develop their understanding of the broader social structures in which values education in classrooms is situated. This awareness is a necessary complement to the official discourses of values education in Australia in order to mitigate the potential exclusionary effects of policy. 130105 Primary Education 35%, 160506 Education policy 35%, 1399 Other Education 30%

Thesis (Ph.D.) - James Cook University, 2005. / Typescript (photocopy) Bibliography: leaves [267]-286.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-145).

abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the issue of Saudi women’s right to drive through a critical analysis of the Saudi online discourse on women’s right to drive. In the study, the attempt was made to provide a critical contrastive analysis of the online debate for and against Saudi women’s right to drive. A review of the literature indicated that very little research has been done about critical discourse analysis (CDA) of online texts focusing on the representation and rights of Saudi women. Employing Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework, a corpus of written posts on the right to drive, written by Saudi women, was analyzed at three levels: (a) textual analysis, (b) discursive practice analysis, and (c) sociocultural practice. The findings of the analysis on the textual and discursive practice levels showed that the theme of ingroup and outgroup presentation was significant in the data. The findings also indicated that ideologies were expressed linguistically by means of naming, presuppositions, predication, and intertextuality. At the sociocultural practice level, the controversial struggle about the right to drive was situated in its broader sociocultural context, in which the complexity of the sociocultural practice of the Saudi Society was revealed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2016

The aim of the this small scale empirical research study was to shed a discursive light on the leadership that was experienced within two primary school settings in the North West of England and the constraints of context that shaped the discourses of leadership within those schools. Contextual factors have been defined as being on three levels: institutional, cultural and governmental. So using this framework as a sorting category for posing situated questions of the participants and Gee’s (1999; 2005; 2011) interconnected one to explore and question the data and the taken-for-granted assumptions, it has been possible to garner an understanding of how these contexts interacted in framing an individual’s understanding of the leadership they were experiencing and implications for their practice. The research questions which this study addressed were: What are the contextual factors that shape discourses of educational leadership? What does the discursive analysis reveal of how stakeholders talk about ways of becoming in the leadership they are experiencing within a socially situated practice? What are the implications of this analysis for the practice of leadership within school? The research was influenced by two particular approaches to discourse analysis, a ‘practice approach’ and a ‘critical approach’. As educational practices are communicative events, this study has adopted a critical discourse analysis in making visible the ways that individuals talk about leadership they are experiencing within their settings. Through a Foucauldian lens it was possible to question the basis for the assumptions and norms of educational leadership in school and examine the ways in which individuals within school were both constructed and shaped by that discourse. This study takes the view that the school as an organizational context for leaders is both complex and under explored as it is in a constant state of flux. Various complexities are acknowledged concerning the contextual nature of leadership; it is complex, context specific, socially constructed, negotiated and hierarchical. Analysis of 18 in-depth semi-structured interviews and 18 cognitive maps reveals a range of Discourses of contextual factors of leadership such as the Discourse of the pivotal role of the headteacher; Discourse of leadership activity; Discourse of identity-work; Discourse of power relations and Discourse of commodification of education all made visible by the individuals within the school to which they endeavour to belong.

Current American education is comprised of and influenced by a myriad of complex legislative, technological, and cultural representations of consumption, however this historic-educational study specifically examines how the Reagan administration discursively initiated the consumerizing educational framework. While existing research studies the neoliberal implications on education, this study addresses the neoliberal reforms under President Reagan within the discursive paradigm of its consumerizing impact. By using Critical Discourse Analysis on a selection of Presidential proclamations, speeches, and national educational reports, this study examines and elucidates how the Reagan administration created the consumerizing framework for American education. The Reagan administration distinguished American education from its predecessors as prioritizing the consuming potential of students, while simultaneously situating education as a commodity. The Reagan administration discursively positioned education as a commodity by implementing the free market values of competition and choice. Through Reagan’s encouragement of corporate involvement and rewarding the tenacity of business initiatives in education, American education transitioned from a democratic ideal to a market-oriented institution. This was specifically accomplished through positioning Reagan’s predecessors as misguided and situating Reagan as a rescuer, while legitimating the reforms as adhering to the American spirit. Similarly, business was presented as embodying the essence of the American spirit and being a rejuvenating force. Choice and competition were recontextualized from their economic purpose and recommended as a new form of educational governance. By understanding the results through the lens of some Frankfurt School thinkers and expanding on Bowles and Gintis’ educational theory, this study argues that Reagan’s reforms embodied a physical consumerizing aspect and an interactional consumerizing facet as necessary for the economy of post-industrial America.

Magister Administrationis - MAdmin / One of the most pertinent issues currently confronting South Africans and perhaps people around the world is the question of how to bring about social justice for everybody regardless of ‘races’, ‘ethnicities’, cultures, religions and genders. With this in mind, this study evaluates through a critical discourse analysis model the preambles of selected public policy documents in conjunction with the issue of racial classification as prescribed in the Z83 job application form in a post-apartheid South Africa. It draws specifically on Halliday’s (1978, 1989, and 2004) discourse analysis framework to evaluate the field and tenor of public discourse (what happened historically and who was involved in public policy formulations) and finally, the mode of public policy discourse (the part that language plays in the making of a new South African society). Moreover, it uses the education sector as an indicator of transformation to highlight the successes and failures of post-apartheid historical redress. It uses education as an exemplar because it ‘plays’ or has the potential to play a pivotal role in transformation and nation building in a post-apartheid South Africa. The study appraises particularly the impact of the notion of plurality of races as a transformation strategy; that is, its successes and failures in determining educational achievements numerically as well as nation building from 1994 to 2014. It uses close linguistic/discourse analysis to unravel the meaning(s) of ‘united in our diversity’ as well as associated concepts in the preambles of selected public policy documents. The reason for this is to show that the notion of different races is implicated in the concept ‘diversity’ in the preamble of South Africa’s constitution act 108 of 1996 as well as ‘designated groups’ in the preambles of affirmative action and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies.

Healthy eating has become an important subject in society, particularly in the media. Food has always been a complex area but in recent years it has become even more distinct. Based on a critical discourse analysis, the purpose of this study is to examine and disclose what discourses that appear in articles regarding dietary counselling in three swedish health magazines, ToppHälsa, MåBra and Womens Health & Wellness. Analyzing three articles in each magazine we identified several discourses. The most prominent is the discourse about wellbeing. The majority of the articles reproduce this discourse by associating healthy eating with wellbeing. As the research field is limited, this study contributes with findings in a area that still needs further research.

abstract: This study tests the hypothesis and assumption of much critical scholarship that the discourse of mass media news transmits prejudicial ideologies to news consumers, influencing the way they think about social justice issues and non-dominant groups in American society, including immigrants, women, and African-Americans. Taking off from the motivations and premises of Critical Discourse Analysis concerning language, power, and ideology, this study aims to extend that paradigm in several ways by applying the analytic techniques of cognitive and critical linguistics to uncover implicit representations in biased discourse. This study also goes beyond previous work by examining the reader comments on media texts to understand how the media’s discourse was received and interpreted, with a focus on the covert transmission of ideological messages. The results reveal how ideologies of prejudice are communicated implicitly through media discourse and how readers’ own ideologies influence that process, as evidenced by their comments. As a study in Critical Discourse Analysis, this study uncovers abuses of power impacting social justice – in this case, the power of writing for the mass media to mold American minds, and therefore influence Americans’ behavior, including elections. Specific news articles from the American networks CNN and Fox were chosen on each of two topics for their relevance to current sociopolitical issues of prejudice and social justice: the US Supreme Court June 2018 decision to uphold the Trump administration “travel ban” and the January 2019 Gillette advertisement, considered controversial for its seemingly feminist criticism of male behavior. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2019