Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe discourse of ESL policy: the impact of the 'literacy crisis'( 2009)The silencing of English as a Second Language (ESL) has occurred concurrently with an alleged crisis in literacy standards that has concentrated funds into early years programs and foundational literacy. The ‘literacy crisis’ has focused teacher attention on standardized assessment and on meeting benchmarks, which shape classroom activities and distort learning activities. The ‘literacy crisis’ has also focused attention on literacy for mother tongue English speakers, at the expense of ESL students. Instead of bilingualism being seen as a resource that can be used to support English literacy development, it is presented as a deficit - a barrier to meeting outcomes in English literacy. This research focuses on how ESL has fared in this context. Drawing on methods from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the language of policy texts is examined to reveal the current status of ESL in Victorian schools where a self-managed school ‘system’ makes it difficult to as certain common practice in relation to ESL provision and programs. The thesis builds its theoretical conclusions using ideas from ‘grounded theory’ to connect the discourse of ESL policy to wider social issues as a way of understanding how policy has impacted on ESL in schools. Having examined policy texts and more positive forms of support for ESL in schools, some recommendations are made to right language wrongs and write language rights that support multilingual school students and encourage linguistic adaptability.
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ItemSustaining children's participation in early childhood settings? Discourse, power and the 'danger' of participation practices( 2009)This study explored the experiences of early childhood educators who sought to increase young children’s participation with the purpose of identifying how children’s participation can be made sustainable in early childhood settings. Increasing interest in young children’s participation rights as a result of the UNCRC, General Comment 7 and the new sociology of childhood, has led to a growing expectation that early childhood educators will enact participation rights in practice. There is a limited body of research on both young children’s participation and on the sustainability of early childhood practices. Of the available literature, the majority is framed within a modernist paradigm that fails to acknowledge the multiple and contradictory nature of early childhood practice. This study used Foucauldian discourse analysis and selected poststructuralist understandings of power, knowledge and truth to explore how socially constructed understandings of young children and of early childhood educators influence participation practices and their sustainability. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with four early childhood educators across three settings. The analysis of interviews showed particular discourses of childhood informing early childhood practices and creating and maintaining regimes of truth. It highlighted the need to recognise that early childhood educators work within and through multiple and conflicting discourses, each offering a particular subjectivity. The analysis also illuminates the micro-practices of power that limit the possibilities for children’s participation and illustrate the ‘danger’ of assimilating children’s participation into existing early childhood practices without critically reflecting on that process. The study raised the question of whether—rather than how—children’s participation should be sustained if it is operating within a singular dominant discourse. The study’s selected poststructuraist approach enabled it to fill a gap in the existing research, and has implications for practice, policy and training and provides direction for future research in the area of children’s participation.