Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis

Discourse is a contested term featuring in a range of research disciplines, including social theory and critical linguistics. The study aligns itself with the notion that discourse is a ‘frame of reference gathering together particular ideas and concepts’ (Van den Brink and Metze, 2006, p. 15). In this sense, policy can be understood not just as text (a situated, social practice and process), but also as a representation of discourse (embodying key ideas and concepts). At its broadest, discourse offers a structure for exploring and organising the contexts and sets of ideas underpinning the expression(s) of access-participation-mobility in the chosen texts.

Although the scope of this study does not extend to a detailed examination of the various interpretations of discourse, Rogers (2004a) suggests that the different methodologies and methods of discourse analysis can be organised along a continuum of linguistic and social approaches. Linguistic approaches characterise language as the ‘privileged choices that meaning makers (language users) as agents have in making decisions about the social functions of their language use’ (p. 6). Linguistic methods focus primarily on deconstructing structural and grammatical features of texts to examine how they contribute towards its overall structure and meaning. Whilst linguistic approaches are by no means

language used in texts within its broader culture and seeking to uncover ‘not only what but how it is being said’ (p. 1).

Social approaches to discourse analysis are equally diverse but are influenced by social theorists and socio-linguists, such as Foucault (1994a, 1994b) and Halliday (1978). Here, language is understood as a product of social processes and practices (Mayr, 2008). Social approaches focus on the capacity of language to shape knowledge. For example, Foucault (1994b) describes discourse as ‘a certain way of speaking invested in a system of prohibitions, exclusions, limitations, freedoms and values’ (p. 193). Examining discourse can help to determine what is and is not included, and how. In other words, what is present but also what is

silent and how these features shape specific articulations of social reality, which

can include policy concerns for equality. Social approaches also emphasise how discourse, as a dominant set of ideas, establishes itself, or becomes ‘naturalised’, in text and, as such, specific policy concerns can take on a ‘common sense’ character, requiring minimal explanation or justification (Fairclough, 1995, p. 82). The study, therefore, explores what policy work notions of access-participation- mobility might undertake to justify specific Government reforms or ideas.

Returning to the continuum of linguistic and social approaches to critical discourse analysis (Rogers, 2004a), the study adopts a social approach in order to examine the key themes and concepts represented in the core texts. The thematic, concept-led social approach acknowledges the politically and historically embedded nature of texts and draws on the notion of ‘epistemes’ (Foucault, 1994b). Hyatt (2005) suggests that epistemes help to describe the socio-cultural context and dominant values in any given period, or era, including the assumptions about how society and, not least, its education systems, should be organised. Examining dominant ideas can, therefore, shed light on how Government understands society and its

component parts, including education. The analysis is interested in how the policies and the language used to articulate them, in the form of common themes, policy motifs and idioms associated with equity, serve to rationalise and/or emphasise specific aspects of reform.

Within this social, thematic approach policy is understood as a process and, as such, an outcome of struggles and tensions between different and, sometimes,

competing sets of ideas (Taylor, 1997). These different sets of ideas can often rest on different understandings of the social purpose of education (Bowe et al, 1992). The analysis is alert to these struggles and, subsequently, looks for evidence of convergent and divergent ideas within and across the policy documents. As well as locating the study on the continuum of discourse analysis, it is also important to situate the study in its specific phase in the ‘policy cycle’, which Bowe et al (1992) suggest can be organised around three stages or ‘contexts’. These are contexts of: ‘influence’, where discourses are constructed; ‘production’, when policy is represented in official documents, such as Green Papers and White Papers; and ‘practice’, when policies are implemented (p. 20). While the importance of each policy stage, and the inter-relationships between them is acknowledged, the focus of the study is on the policy documents themselves, as produced texts. The analysis is, therefore, interested in the text publication phase (context of ‘production’).

In the spirit of transparency about my research decisions, I initially considered combining the documentary analysis with a small number of stakeholder

interviews, including relevant Ministers and Civil Servants involved in the creation of the four White Papers. Whilst planning the early stages of the research it soon became evident that I was drawn by the need to fully understand the policy documents through a detailed, extensive and substantial critical account of the texts and how they represented the issues under investigation. This phase was a significant moment in the research design process. Whilst there were pragmatic considerations to the decisions made, the overriding factors were methodological. Ultimately, I felt that attempting to combine the two elements of research within the chosen time period might underplay one of the phases of the policy cycle and would limit the scope for an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the texts. The decision to focus on a documentary analysis was also a response to the relatively limited amount of research concentrating exclusively on policy texts, and the objective to fully understand how these four White Papers had framed policy concerns for equity.