The purpose of this study is to describe changes that led to the revision of the Grade Four Literacy Test in Jamaica from a classroom-based assessment to a national high-stakes examination in 2009. Educators and researchers in Jamaica have observed and examined the less-than-desired student performance in English literacy exams over several decades. My research continues the tradition and adds to the investigation of literacy challenges in Jamaica. The overarching research question for this study was to understand how the Grade Four Literacy Test, originally a classroom-based assessment for a decade, became a national high-stakes exam in 2009? I used Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the main theoretical and methodological framework while analyzing key education government documents and newspaper articles related to the Grade Four Literacy Test. Using qualitative case study methods, I conducted classroom observations and interviews at two public elementary schools located in inner-city settings. Using CDA, I traced the changing discourse within four education policy documents and newspaper articles that promoted a test-taking accountability agenda during the revision of the literacy test. School observations and interviews enabled me to observe how faculty and administrators responded to the amended literacy test. Through interviews with key research participants I examined stakeholders' assumptions regarding literacy identity. One of the implications of this study is the importance of enhanced teacher training in comprehension and bilingual strategies, and effective use of classroom-based literacy assessments within the Jamaican language context. Future research might focus on efforts to ensure that students who eventually pass supplementary literacy tests are assisted in moving beyond learning to read to a position where they are reading to learn key content needed to succeed within the academic setting of school.

In March 2010, parents and community activists in rural Sunflower County, Mississippi, organized and enacted a boycott of the local public schools, which led to a comprehensive accreditation audit by the Mississippi Department of Education and the subsequent takeover of the local education agency. This study examines the boycott's connections to local discourses of protest in the Black community, to local histories and contemporary quality of life, and to the circulations of power evident in the grassroots activism and in the state intervention. This work is situated in an interdisciplinary theoretical framework which draws on place studies, rhizome theory, Levinasian ethics, and Critical Discourse Analysis. Using ethnographic methods of data collection and Critical Discourse Analysis of data, I position the boycott in context and examine its rhizomatic roots and offshoots in discourse.

This transformative case study used qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the social construction of collaborative and technology leadership among students in a graduate-level course on curriculum leadership. Analysis of interactions among students during an asynchronous computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) project using critical discourse analysis was completed. Student dialogue was analyzed for how students across different social groups interacted discursively to promote and inhibit the development of leadership in the domains of collaboration and technology, while socially constructing the knowledge context for learning about the societal curriculum for diverse social groups. Findings were that women more than men were verbose and promotive, and that much of their power/language exchanges involved mutual understanding. Black students were underrepresented in the graduate course, but gained power through language and course design. Latino students lacked self-advocacy and emphasized cultural diversity in their use of power/language. An interview with the professor provides insight into the structures that frame student's experiences. These findings are discussed through a three-tiered Critical Discourse Analysis Framework and recommendations are made for educators, leaders and education leadership preparation programs that use on-line learning platforms that support collaborative learning experiences.

Despite intensified and concerted efforts to realise sustainable development. Western industrialised countries have in recent years experienced several mass protests against institutions perceived variously to have the potential to govern the global economy in environmentally sustainable or unsustainable ways. This thesis examines how different actors in the news media attempt to legitimate and de-legitimate neoliberal approaches to economic governance on grounds that these approaches are or are not environmentally sustainable. By using a critical discourse analysis perspective to analyse texts produced by actors with competing political commitments (neo-liberal and left-liberal), it discusses how primarily profit-driven generic conventions can govern what can and cannot be said in debates on sustainability. The thesis suggests that the effectiveness of (cultural) politics aimed at legitimating and de-legitimating neo-liberal approaches can be understood in teens of the relationship between an instrumental rationality geared at maximising the effectiveness of existing institutional systems and a communicative rationality geared at achieving understanding.

<p>The purpose of this essay is to examine sfi (Swedish for immigrants), which is an ingrational-political tool with objective of teaching immigrants to read and write in Swedish. With the use of critical discourse analysis we examine the discursive practices within sfi. We also examine our methodological and theoretical approaches, and our application of them. Our research questions are as follows:</p><p>• How are the discursive usage of “person centered” and “society centered” expressions being used?</p><p>• How well does our methodological and theoretical resources work?</p><p>In our theoretical viewpoint we use “post colonial theory”, which is a perspective concerned with global power relations seen from a historical perspective. Colonialism, in this view, still continues to determine the course of the world and cultural identity formation even after it has formally ended. According to our second theoretical viewpoint, “Governmentality”, the focus of analysis concerns differing forms of control. The shift from the state to the individual is of special interest.</p><p>The results of the analysis show that the integrational-political discourse order within sfi seems to be fragile. We also find that “person centered” expressions are more frequent than “society centered” ones.</p><p>The results also show that our theoretical and methodological resources are bound with certain difficulties. Firstly, critical discourse analysis has been found to be inadequate with regard to our empirical material. It was first when we applied Ulrich Becks theory regarding individualization that the discursive practice became comprehensible in a larger context. Secondly, our results showed that governmentality was problematic in the context in which it was used.</p>

This research paper aims to show how racism, power, social representations and identity are created and reproduced through the media. The research paper will analyse newspaper articles presented about Cronulla riot in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph using Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, CDA, as a theory and method. The research paper aims to demonstrate how inequality in the Australian society is reproduced by the media through the use stereotypes and certain social representations and how knowledge and awareness about this is relevant to social work of today.

The interest of this thesis is how the information society will be expressed in some public texts. The focus is especially on how such concepts as learning, knowledge, identity and IT as a tool will be constructed discursively. In a social constructionist meaning the future will be created through communication and interaction between people. Some Swedish Government Official Reports (SGOR) and journals have been analyzed with critical discourse analysis. On a wide level four strong discourses will constitute the discourse order of the information society. These four are the discourses of the market economy, the discourse of globalisation, the discourse of individualisation and the discourse of IT. Further IT has been the cause to a “new” dynamic society that is “in advance”, under “change” and “refinement”. This society is at the same time global and local, which means “glocal”. It is populated by the “new” human who is a “nomad” who will have a great own responsibility to adapt to the “loose structures” of the new society. The individual will be held before the collective. IT will “deliver” and reinforce the human abilities. Knowledge has been a commodity, which can be bought and sold worldwide. Knowledge will grow old very fast and because of that we need access to “fast knowledge” “just-in-time”. To describe the qualities of IT the analysed texts use metaphors. The metaphor “ghost” will fulfil our wishes in an unexplained way, the metaphor “wings” is about freedom and the metaphor “lever” explains that our abilities will be enhanced, in this specific case our cognitive abilities. The analysed texts both confirm earlier pictures of the information society and develop them further. Three positions can be distinguished. The first of them is that the IT will be expressed as ”force of nature” which as a revolution will change our society. The second one is how the force in IT is expressed almost like science fiction stories. The texts tell about the future as it already was here. The third position says that the new society is full of paradoxes. The problems in the world, even those that have been caused by the technology, can and should be solved, not only with more technology, but with the same technology which have caused the problems. The discursive paradoxes, which will be highlighted in the results, make the development of IT to an unavoidable part of the social practice of the future. There are no choices or alternatives.

Abstract Carlsson, Lena (2006). ). Medborgarskap som demokratins praktiska uttryck i skolan. Diskursiva konstruktioner av gymnasieelever som medborgare. Citizenship as the practical expression of democracy at school. Discursive constructions of upper secondary pupils as citizens. School and education have a specific status owing to their task to educate young citizens and further their development. It is thus possible to regard schools as a type of public sphere, where individual and private matters are transcended. According to the curriculum for the secondary school system, the professional school staff´s task is two-fold insofar as they should mediate both knowledge and democracy. In this doctoral thesis the focus is placed on how and by what means education can contribute to young members of society finding their place and coping with their roles as citizens in a democratic society. The overall aim of this thesis is to present a deeper interpretation of the meanings and consequences of teachers´ speech concerning upper secondary pupils as citizens. More specifically, the aim is to empirically problematise and theoretically reconstruct pedagogical discourses on citizenship as practical expressions of demoracy in the context of education. Two central terms, which are thus highlighted are democracy and citizenship. Both Durkheim and Dewey provide significant theoretical points of departure, which are drawn upon in this thesis. Bourdieu contributes with perspectives on the ideological role, which institutions of education play in legitimising already existing societal orders. Foucault poses questions about power and knowledge. Habermas’ emphasis is placed on the discursive rationality expressed in verbal communication, which serves as an overall perspective for this thesis. Thus, in terms of methodology language constitutes the most central tool. Analyses are made in three stages. Reforms and policy are supposed to have been created within a central discursive framework and are therefore examined by way of analytical perusal of a) post-war education policy texts and b) current national policy documents concerning the Business and Administration Programme in upper secondary education. The third stage involves analysis of c) eight conversations from the professional school staff’s discursive practice by applying critical discourse analysis as a methodological tool. Four separate discourses have evolved, each pointing to different perspectives on human beings, knowledge and society: a discursive perception which is directed towards traditional values, a second perception which has communication and democracy as its superior ideal, and yet another discourse is directed towards trade and industry while, finally, one more discourse which is mainly characterised by a protective attitude towards pupils. Finally, how these contradictory as well as concordant discourses dictate the conditions and frameworks for the sort of citizenship which is constructed and constituted in the pedagogical practice is discussed, and thus how school as a public sphere may be understood in a more profound way. Key words: democracy, citizenship, critical discourse analysis, discursive constructions, reforms, policy, communication.

The purpose of this essay is to examine sfi (Swedish for immigrants), which is an ingrational-political tool with objective of teaching immigrants to read and write in Swedish. With the use of critical discourse analysis we examine the discursive practices within sfi. We also examine our methodological and theoretical approaches, and our application of them. Our research questions are as follows: • How are the discursive usage of “person centered” and “society centered” expressions being used? • How well does our methodological and theoretical resources work? In our theoretical viewpoint we use “post colonial theory”, which is a perspective concerned with global power relations seen from a historical perspective. Colonialism, in this view, still continues to determine the course of the world and cultural identity formation even after it has formally ended. According to our second theoretical viewpoint, “Governmentality”, the focus of analysis concerns differing forms of control. The shift from the state to the individual is of special interest. The results of the analysis show that the integrational-political discourse order within sfi seems to be fragile. We also find that “person centered” expressions are more frequent than “society centered” ones. The results also show that our theoretical and methodological resources are bound with certain difficulties. Firstly, critical discourse analysis has been found to be inadequate with regard to our empirical material. It was first when we applied Ulrich Becks theory regarding individualization that the discursive practice became comprehensible in a larger context. Secondly, our results showed that governmentality was problematic in the context in which it was used.

Coverage for the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) has been low since the publication of Wakefield’s 1998 study associating MMR with the onset of autism. As a part of a larger project on risk communication, this study examined the medical discourse on parental decision-making for childhood immunizations to gain insight on why risk communication efforts have not been successful at improving uptake. The Public Understanding of Science (PUS) was used as a theoretical lens to guide Critical Discourse Analysis of texts from medical, pediatric, and public health journals, from which the analytic themes of Risk and Trust emerged. MMR uptake was framed mainly in terms of risk, indicating the dominance of the Deficit Model of PUS in the discourse. Future research and risk communication need to expand beyond current notions of risk; the Contextual Model of PUS can help highlight other factors that impact parental decision-making about MMR.