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

that give shape to concept of education
in the Pacific, teachers may be able to develop culturally relevant curricula that feature
indigenous voices, beliefs, and educational aims that reflect the needs of their students and
communities.
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Introduction
In this paper, I propose that in regard to educational reform among Pacific island
countries, curricula can be designed to represent indigenous knowledge and culture based on a
perspective that is appreciative of the distinctiveness of Pacific cultures and incorporates a
strength-based approach to educational development and capacity building. In addition to this
approach, I argue that critical discourse analysis can and should be employed by educators in the
Pacific as part of a curriculum development process that affirms and reforms the knowledge
systems and cultures of Pacific island countries. For clarity, I don’t limit curriculum
development to activities prior to classroom instruction. Instead, I regard curriculum
development as a multidimensional process that involves both teachers and students in planning,
monitoring, evaluating, reflecting-upon and recreating learning experiences. With this in mind,
and in drawing from my experience in working with the Curriculum Cymreig (Welsh
Government, 2012), I provide a comparative discussion of how CDA may be employed by
Pacific educators Pacific to serve the educational and cultural needs of their students and
communities, with a particular focus on the interplay between curriculum as an official
representation of a culture and the development and sustainability of indigenous identities and
culture through schooling.
In this discussion, I broadly draw upon two theoretical positions: Critical theory and
Postcolonialism. However, I do not conflate these discourses into a singular perspective. Critical
theory and postcolonialism share a number of common concerns, but also have at their roots
significantly different theoretical origins, assumptions and motivations,. While I acknowledge
sympathies between the two discourses, I also am aware of the tensions and strains between
them. For the sake of clarity then, I emphasize that this paper is primarily a discussion of using
critical discourse analysis as a method for framing curriculum development.

The goals of such an

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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

“the
colonizer,” as discussed in Said’s Orientalism (1978)¸ and how such discourses exist as
destructive forms of domination (Fanon, 2005) that immobilize the subaltern (Spivak, 2010) and
definitively commit the other, the colonized subject, to “spaces of difference” (de Kock, 1992).
So while the following discussion is primarily concerned with the goals and aims of a
critical project – of social transformation and to a degree, the elevation of human emancipation,
it is not particularly a postcolonial discussion. In this paper, I frame the discussion of critical
discourse analysis within a broad postcolonial orientation, and focus on sympathetic areas of
representation, voice, empowerment and autonomy shared by the two theoretical discourses.
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Critical Discourse Analysis
As an approach to inquiry, CDA enables one to peer through the opacity of power
relations found in the discursive practices and texts of social and cultural structures, and assists
in informing us how the indistinct features of these relationships bolster the presence and
alignment of power and hegemony (Fairclough, 1995). CDA is distinctive from other approaches
to language studies because it involves mobilizing a critical perspective that is intended to
demystify and clarify ideologies present within social structures and the discursive practices
exercised therein.
Discourse and Discursive Formations
In this paper, I define discourse as a form of social practice, discoursal practice and text
that represents and calibrates one’s orientation to reality (Fairclough, 1995, p.74). Discourses are
produced by, and contribute to, social structures and exist as “a material form of ideology and
language is invested by ideology” (Fairclough, 1995, p.73). By analyzing discursive formations
we may reveal the ideological assumptions at play within social structures. In using the term,
discursive formation, I refer to ways in which discourse produces “patterns of regularity in terms
of order, correlation, position, and function” (Macey, 2001, p.101).

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

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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

that
they “identify the contradictions that exist between the way people make meaning of their world
and the way the world is materially organized through the structures and institutions and codes of
social life” (Quantz, 2009, p.2).
Critical discourse analysis can provide a useful perspective from which one can
investigate the interplay between curriculum and identity in that it provides educators with
indispensable tools that enable them to see the ways in which ideological components of
language work in obscuring power relations. In my study, Developing the Curriculum Cymreig, I
utilized CDA in investigating seemingly commonsensical claims the text used in organizing
representations of Welshness. From this analysis, I intended to reveal new ways to approach and
interact with concepts of identity, culture, and community for Welsh students.
Contextualizing Critical Discourse Analysis
As a form of analysis, the foundations of CDA are firmly entrenched within discourses of
inquiry formed through a predominately Western ontological and epistemological orientation. In
addition, the majority of literature and research in the field of CDA involves analyses of English
use with methods and strategies for navigating and investigating the particular grammatical
elements of the English language. These factors have led to a significant number of CDA studies
to be situated within a Western context. Often, critical studies are regarded as an “un-Pacific”
approach to inquiry. This is a false assumption. Forms and methods of critique are as varied as
the cultural circumstances in which these efforts take place. As such, critical perspectives have
the potential to take a myriad of forms in Oceania. Postcolonial and Pacific studies are two fields
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that readily come to mind in that they both engage in forms of cultural critique, or inquiries and
analyses of power and representation. However, they do not particular engage in calls for action
in the transformation of unjust circumstances and practices. For CDA to be used as a meaningful
approach to curriculum development, educators in Oceania can deconstruct Western dimensions
of CDA and mobilize indigenous ontological and epistemological assumptions and approaches in
operationalizing a Pacific approach to CDA as an appropriate method of analysis in their
respective cultures. Such an undertaking is outside of the scope of this paper, but one question
that might guide this process is “How can educators in the Pacific honor and mobilize indigenous
cultural constructs and onto-epistemological considerations in undertaking critical studies of the
discourses which comprise the various curricula in the region?”
Critically Analyzing Curricular Discourse
As mentioned above, I conducted a critical discourse analysis of Developing the
Curriculum Cymreig, a document designed to assist teachers in Wales in providing culturally
relevant learning environments for their students. In situating my analysis within a Welsh
context, I sought to deconstruct my identity as a Welsh-American and to situate my inquiry
within a specifically Welsh dimension. In undertaking this attempt to contextualize my research,
the theme of “representation” became an important concept that would inform my study. In this
analysis, I asked thefollowing questions:
 In what ways does the text establish its authority position in regard to its representations
of Welshness?
 In what ways does the text represent Welshness?
The purposeof this analysis was to investigate how ideology is used in manufacturing consent
regarding therepresentation of Welsh culture and identity, and to “denaturalize”commonsensical
assumptions embeddedwithin these representations. I analyzed the organizational features of the
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text and its linguistic and grammatical elements. In particular, I emphasized the relational,
expressive, and experiential values contained within the text. From this analysis, cogent themes
regarding the representation of Welshness were identified and then interpreted within the
theoretical framework of critical pedagogy.
In my findings, I addressed how the text utilizes quotations from official government
agencies, the national curriculum, and teachers in schools in foregrounding its rationale and
authority regarding how the Curriculum Cymreig is to be implemented in schools. I also
discussed how relational, experiential, and expressive values found in both the vocabulary and
grammatical features of the document work in establishing anideological common ground
between the text and its audience. Furthermore, I provided examples of how the text frames the
discussion of its goals and aims within a language heavily reliant upon the use of declarative
sentences and truncated grammatical questions — processes which place the text in an active
position of questioning and answering itself, with the result of this arrangement situating the
reader as a dislocated observer and unquestioning recipient of information.I also discussed
examples of the text’s theoretical orientation to the concept of Welshness. With an emphasis on
experiencing “Welsh life,” and the determination that students will identify their “own sense of
Welshness” from the meaning-making processes they employ during these experiences, I
proposed the text situates Welshness within a constructivist discourse, and the process of
identifying a sense of Welshness as a type of phenomenological method of inquiry
andexploration. Simply put, Welshness was represented as something to be experienced, and
students identified their own sense of Welshness through reducing their understanding of these
experiencesto their most essential — their most Welsh — component. In regard to how the text
represents Welshness, I provided examples of how the text establishes what it regards to be the
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distinctiveness of Welsh culture and how this distinctiveness is something that is to be
experienced by the students. These findings are important in helping teachers and students to
understand the less-recognizable motivations and beliefs regarding Welsh culture held by the
Welsh curriculum authority, as well as ways in which that authority organizes discourse to
enhance its position of authority in regard to defining the concept of Welshness for educators and
students in Wales.
Shortly after relocating to Tonga in 2011, I began to recognize familiar themes of
identity, culture, and indigenous ways of “knowing” and “being” in my discussions with
educators and members of the community. These themes resonated with postcolonial
considerations and concerns I had while conducting my research in Wales.While Wales and
Pacific Island Countries seem to possess few commonalities, they do share long-lasting effects of
what is commonly referred to as Western imperialism and colonialism. Both Welsh and the
diversity of Pacific cultures have been subjected to the interventions of colonization, which
continues to impose significant cultural, social, economic, and political consequences. Embedded
within these postcolonial dispositions are representations of identity that continue to shape and
inform the dialectic of “self” and “other.” So while Wales and the nations of the Pacific possess
important distinctions from one another, they also share remarkable commonalities in regard to
how representations of their culture are expressed through curriculum, why they are represented
this way, and how these representations are to be understood by teachers and students.
Over the years, Pacific scholars have drawn attention to the concerns of educators and
studentsby calling for a “re-visioning” of education in the Pacific consisting of strategies that
situate indigenous philosophies and onto-epistemological elements at the heart of the
development of culturally relevant and responsible curricula, concepts of educational leadership
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and contextually grounded aims and goals for organizing and delivering education (Helu, 1995;
Johansson-Fua, 2007, 2009; Manu’atu and Kepa, 2003, 2008; Smith, 1999; Thaman, 1995, 1999,
2003a). In response, Pacific educators have engaged in work to promote and support indigenous
content and perspectives in the development of curriculum, with much of this work promoting an
emphasis on curriculum content and methods of teaching and instruction, including the medium
through which teachers and students engage in schooling. These are important components of
curriculum development, with the expectation being that students will positively respond to these
components in ways that affirm the distinctiveness and relevancy of a particular identity and
place and resist the further marginalization of their respective cultures.
The importance of this approach to schooling cannot be overstated, but at the same time,
these cannot be the only considerations when developing culturally relevant curricula. Equally
important to the actual cultural, curricular constructs are the representations, or more
specifically, the discursive formations which stage, promote, and eventually hail student and
teachers’ orientations to such representations.
Critical Analysis as Curriculum Development
Said (1978) introduces the concept of Orientalism suggesting that the “Orient” is a
representation of what the “West” considers to be the “Orient.” It is not a description of the
“other,” but instead is a representation of the other as determined by a “Western” perspective.
Thaman suggests that in applying the concept of Orientalism to the Pacific, we must recognize it
has “been produced politically, socially, ideologically, and militarily by westerners” (Thaman,
2003b). Possibly the most effective form of political, social, and ideological production of the
representation of the Pacific “Other” was manifested in colonial era schools and curricula, and
continues in various iterations and degrees through the remnants of these educational systems.
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The revisioning of education by scholars mentioned above has largely been in response to the
normalization of, and the socialization of students to, Orientalist discourses in Pacific schools
through a diversity of discursive formations enacted and employed in contemporary educational
practice. In recent years, donor agencies have supported this rethinking process by providing
funds for localized curriculum development and teacher training, and the work undertaken by
indigenous educators and their donor-partners has been beneficial in at least exposing the
importance of indigenous knowledge and culture as necessary foundations for teaching and
learning in Pacific schools. However, without a critical analysis of the discourses employed and
promoted through these curricula, questions still remain: “To what degree do Orientalist
discursive formations continue to shape and affirm commonsensical assumptions of the
representation of Pacific cultures in curriculum?” and “To what extent have educators and
students within a Pacific context been able to deconstruct, analyze and promote their own
representation of culture and identity?”
These questions bring us to an important concept: hybridity. In this context, I use
hybridity to describe the intermingling of the colonizer and the colonized (which are admittedly
cumbersome and vague terms) in the production and dissemination of discourses that shape how
these entities come to recognize, understand, and represent indigenous knowledge and culture.
At this point, I must clarify my use of the terms “colonizer” and “the colonized.” I am not
referring to a specific, historical relationship of military or political domination. Neither do I
assert these are concrete signifiers possessing explicit and discrete values. Rather, similar to how
Freire (2006) uses the terms “oppressor” and “the oppressed” in elucidating a subject/object
dialectic, I use these terms as ideal-types to represent a hegemonic relationship between
“external,” cultural, political, and social influences and “internal,” indigenous perspectives. I also
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extend the concept of hybridity to include practices through which indigenous educators and
donor partners currently work in developing curricula. Hybridity encompasses a wide range of
concepts: complicity, resistance, compromise — all of these qualities exist in one way or another
in working relations between what we often refer to as binary opposites: indigenous and nonindigenous
systems, or the colonizer and the colonized. However, as Bhabha (1994) has
eloquently stated, the liminality of colonial relations disrupts the binary assumption of these
interventions and provides a more nuanced, and admittedly, complicated understanding of these
relations, as well as exposing ruptures within power structures that maintain those relationships.
In referring to Thaman’s suggestion that Orientalism has been produced by “Westerners,” we
must also recognize that this production continues through joint-means in contemporary
educational work and can include the efforts of those for whom the discourses of Orientalism are
meant to represent.
Thus, while postcolonial theory is essential in analyzing and interpreting how and why
such representations exist, in terms of challenging these discourses – particularly within an
educational context – I argue that CDA is an appropriate method for further analysis and
meaningful action that is necessary to transform the discursive and institutional practices that
currently limit educational experiences in the Pacific. While much of this curricular work has
focused on promoting an alternative, indigenous-based perspective to the Orientalist
representation of indigenous knowledge, culture, and educational aims, without a critical
perspective this process may also include mobilizing and embedding significant discursive
elements that continue to marginalize and subjugate discourses that challenge Orientalist
representations of Pacific cultures in curriculum. In short, educators may inadvertently
perpetuate a Western representation of Pacific cultures through the mobilization of discourses
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that seem obvious or commonsensical. Therefore, a need exists for educators (and students) to
not only analyze historical and contemporary discourse of donor-driven curriculum support, but
also the discursive formations that arise from indigenous voices and practices currently giving
shape to the discourse of curriculum and identity in the Pacific.
Critically Analyzing Pacific Curricula
Critique is often discouraged — particularly in a public setting — throughout the Pacific.
However, it continues to occur through a variety of discourses and practices emerging from the
cultural contexts in which they take place. For example, in constructing a “taxonomy of silence”
among cultural groups in Fiji Nabobo (2006) describes how silence in specific circumstances can
be employed as a form of resistance or dissent. In Tonga, Heliaki, or the use of metaphor, can be
used to negotiate complex social relations in offering critique (Smith & Otunuku, 2012). Often,
critical stances are conceptualized as “in your face” expressions of resistance or dissent, but in
the Pacific, socio-cultural norms have shaped the ways in which critique is conducted and
delivered. Critical discourse analysis as curriculum development is an appropriate method of
critique for the Pacific in that it does not require public displays of resistance or dissent. In
addition, it situates critique as part of the learning environment which should serve as a safespace
in which teachers and students can engage their intellectual curiosity and transgress
borders in search of gaining and constructing new knowledge and meaning.
The question remains, “how does this type of critique take place?” To describe the
process in general terms, teachers should have an operational knowledge of critical discourse
analysis. Then, they can orient students to the nature of critique. Students should understand
what critique is, it’s positive and negative consequences, and why should they participate in it.
Teachers can also provide analytical tools for the students, and when the analysis is completed,
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they can provide ways for students to discuss their results and to discover how the new
knowledge gained from the exercise can meaningfully inform future action. Critics of the use of
CDA in schools may argue that discourse analysis may be too difficult for certain students, and
that this approach to learning can only be effectively used at the secondary level. Discourse
analysis does not exist as a strictly defined set of analytical steps, and the various approaches to
discourse analysis can be modified to meet the needs of those conducting the analysis. Others
argue that such activities and concepts fall outside of the prescribed content areas for teachers —
and to a degree this may be true, but this does not discount the educational and transformative
potential of critical discourse analysis. A number of curricular disruptions occur at multiple
levels in teaching and can be successfully managed by teachers, with many of those
circumstances provided new and unintended opportunities for learning. Another important factor
to consider is that teachers can incorporate these items step-by-step into the curriculum, and that
CDA remains firmly situated within methods of teaching and learning — as a pedagogical
process and not necessarily the object of study.
In what follows, I briefly describe how a teacher might begin to incorporate CDA into the
classroom. For the sake of clarity, I situate this example as part of a Form 4 economics lesson in
Tonga, but similar scenarios could be enacted in any Pacific island country. This example
assumes that the teacher has gained an understanding of CDA, has shared that understanding
with the students and has provided them with tools to conduct their analysis (in this case, an
understanding of nominalizations). In this particular lesson, the teacher explains the following
learning outcomes to the students: (a) Students will provide examples of economic resources (b)
Students will demonstrate how economic resources are used to produce goods and services and
(c) Students will identify different businesses and the resources they use to produce their goods
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and services. In addition to these typical learning outcomes for economics, the teacher adds the
following outcome: (c) Students will critically analyze the text and identify how nominalizations
might be used in discussing the relationships between business, consumers and natural resources
in Tonga.
In simple terms, nominalizations are processes that are converted to nouns. When this
occurs, some of the meaning of the word or words is reduced, such as timing, agency or
responsibility (Fairclough, 2001). For example, is a section of the students’ textbook had the
heading “Shrinking fish population problem,” this phrase takes a process — a reduction of the
number of harvestable fish, and condenses it into a less-complicated noun: “Shrinking fish
population.” It is a mystery. It exists ahistorically and without cause, and as a result, can be
simply accepted as “just the way things are.”
However, as part of their analysis, the teacher and students can begin to question the
nominalization in order to expand the concept once again. Through this questioning process, the
teacher and students begin to consider processes for how fish populations are being reduced.
Perhaps it is an environmental issue or perhaps it is an issue of over-fishing. Students can also
begin to identify actors who were anonymous through the use of nominalization, but are soon
revealed through a critical analysis of the text. Who might be involved in the reduction of fish
populations? Village fishermen and women? Tourists? Corporate fisheries? questions open up
new pathways to understanding the problem and provide students with a more sophisticated
approach in achieving the stated learning outcomes of the lesson, such as “how businesses use
natural resources in producing goods and services.” In moving forward, the teacher and students
pursue clues revealed through their analysis. Perhaps they find stories in the newspaper regarding
corporate fishing companies lobbying for relaxed fishing regulations. With this information,
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students begin to investigate the minutes from parliament sessions and realize that the lobbying
attempts were successful, and as a result, fishing companies were subject to less regulation and
drastically increased their harvests. Suddenly, the mystical problem of shrinking fish
populations, which when written as a nominalization leaves little opportunity for explanation or
engagement, suddenly becomes an understandable issue that is comprised of real people,
decisions and outcomes. More important, when understood in this way, the teacher and students
can then discover ways to take action. As the teacher and students understand the relationships
once obscured through nominalization, they can then formulate strategies to take action. Perhaps
as an assignment in class, or even as an extracurricular activity, the teacher and students can,
through the involvement of the community and other stakeholders, organize a response to the
deregulation of fishing rights and seek to transform a potentially devastating reality into one that
acknowledges the rights and needs of those less-powerful and far more reliant upon natural
resources.
As teachers and students gain expertise in analyzing the vocabulary, grammar and
structures of their curricular text, the teacher can begin to incorporate more analytical tools into
the learning experiences of students. For example, larger, more encompassing concepts such as
relational, expressive and experiential values can be explored. According to Fairclough (2001),
relational values may identify the perceived social relationship between the producer of the text
and its consumers. Experiential features contain cues regarding the text producer’s experience of
the natural or social world. Expressive values provide insight into the producer’s understanding
and representation of their reality. These elements of CDA are particularly appropriate for
Pacific discourse. For example, relational values of vocabulary can be considered through
identifying formal and informal words. In Tonga, obvious examples include how words used in a
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text reveal if the actors are “common,” noble or royal. The relational values of grammatical
features in a text (such as the pronouns “we” and “you”) can also inform the reader about
embedded power relations between the subjects of the text and between the subjects of the text
and the reader. Expressive values in vocabulary are significant in Tonga (and the Pacific at large)
particularly because of the prominent use of metaphor. In regard to the expressive values of
grammatical features of a text, these are significant because they are concerned with modality —
or the speaker’s authority in the representation and evaluation of truth and their reality
(Fairclough, 2001). Experiential values of vocabulary address concepts such as agency and
responsibility. In regards to an analysis of the experiential values of grammatical features of text,
the teacher and students can better determine if a sentence is passive or active, negative or
positive, and how these characteristics relate to the subjects of the text (Fairclough, 2001). The
example above, and the possible areas for further development of CDA in the classroom are just
one of many alternative teachers and students make incorporate into their classrooms. The
success of these approaches is reliant upon a number of factors including teacher preparation,
student receptivity, age/cognitive-appropriate learning activities and outcomes, and the political
character of the classroom, community and cultural context in which the analyses take place.
Challenges and Recommendations
As mentioned previously, critique can be a complicated concept in Oceania. Its
interpretation is often couched within a miasma of distrust, uncertainty, and/or fear. Questioning
social power relations can often be regarded as an obsession with negativity and an expression of
disrespect, and these reactions cannot be wholly discounted. However, a greater appreciation for
the possibility of critique can be developed with a fuller understanding of the goals of critical
studies and the motivation behind such inquiries. In the contemporary Western discourse of
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critical studies in education, prominent figures such as Freire, (1985; 2006), Giroux, (1983;
1997), Kincheloe and Mclaren (2011) posit that at the heart of critical inquiry exists a form of
love — or at least a recognition of the dignity of the human condition and a commitment to the
emancipation of those whose dignity and agency to determine their own place in the world is
weakened or withheld due to inequitable relationships of power exercised through the
manipulation of the public and private spheres. In the Pacific, similar perspectives are held by
noted scholars such as Hau’ofa, (1993), Helu (1999), Smith (1999) and Wendt (1976; Suya,
1985; Va’ai, 1997).With this in mind, the purpose of critical analysis in curriculum is not to
challenge power relations for the sake of disruption, but to expose ways in which inequitable
power relations are kept in the hopes of creating new avenues of understanding, expression, and
emancipation.The act of critique in a context where such actions may be viewed as an attack on
the social collective, or which “outs” the individual as rebel or misfit, is a labor of love when the
labor is in-line with the overall goals of seeking to discover ways to create a more just and
equitable society.
As mentioned above, a key aspect of any culture with a postcolonial disposition is
representation. Educators should be critically concerned with the discursive elements of how a
particular culture is represented. In addition to the previous example of CDA in the classroom, I
suggest a number of questions that may prove useful in helping teachers in conducting a CDA of
curricular materials as part of their lesson planning process. For example, who claims the
authority to determine how their particular ethnicity or culture is represented, what are the
significant discursive elements used in how that representation is established and maintained,
and how might such a representation (or the power to produce it) benefit the producer? Educators
(and students) should also think critically about how students become oriented to such
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representations. What are the significant features of discursive formations within a particular
cultural representation, and how do those elements orient students’ students’ perceptions? There
are an innumerable number of questions teachers can ask in conducting a critical discourse
analysis of the curricula they use in teaching. I chose these because they were helpful in my
study of the creation and promotion of cultural representations in curricula in Wales. Pacific
Island countries face share similar concerns as teachers and students engage in the struggle to
participate in educational experiences founded upon meaningful interactions of culture and
identity, and how those constructs are represented in curriculum.
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