Critical Discourse Analysis Curriculum

Critical Discourse Analysis as Curriculum Development:

Critical approaches to culturally relevant curricula in the Pacific

Dr. Kevin Smith

Abstract

In 2010, I conducted a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of a curricular document produced by the Welsh Government intended to provide teachers with guidance on how to enact a “Curriculum Cymreig” (a culturally relevant curriculum initiative) in schools in Wales. There is a multiplicity of postcolonial commonalities that have complicated curriculum development in both Wales and many Pacific Island countries, and it is through these shared dimensions that I believe CDA can be used by educators in re-thinking the interplay between culture and curriculum. Through a critique of discursive formations

The goals of such an

2

exercise are discussed in detail later, but at the most basic level, the purpose of engaging in critical discourse analysis in development curriculum is to enable educators and students to identify discourses that contribute to how schooling, knowledge and learning are organized and performed, with the intention that once these elements have been identified and assessed, they can be acted-upon with the intention of transforming unjust educational practices and social circumstances into more inclusive forms of learning and living. This is a primary goal of a critique – to address the possibility, the hope, of human emancipation within particular social circumstances and contexts.

Such lofty goals are not associated with postcolonial perspectives. While postcolonial theorists may analyze the political and social strategies of hegemonic domination and control, they do not specifically include intentions to address issues of social justice and inclusion. In respect to this paper, I am primarily concerned with postcolonial critiques of representation – particularly how representations of “the colonized” are produced and reproduced by

Critical discourse analysis suggests that multiple discursive formations are present within social institutions, and these formations contribute to the normalization of ideologies which promote certain assumptions to the level of commonsense knowledge (Fairclough, 1995). From this perspective, CDA acknowledges that “structures are not only presupposed by, and necessary conditions for, action, but are also the products of action; Or, in a different terminology, actions reproduce structures” (Fairclough, 1995, p.35). The objective of CDA can be described as the revealing of ideological assumptions that operate both explicitly and implicitly within written text and the spoken word (Fairclough, 1995), and through the unveiling of these assumptions we

4

may recognize our subjectivity to certain forms of power and control, as well as ways in which we participate inthe production and reproduction of power-laden discourse(s) and discursive practices. This speaks directly to the concerns of those working in the critical tradition in