Critical Discourse Analysis on the Curriculum Ideologies of Taiwan’s Secondary Schools—the Changing Ethnic Discourses from Authority to Democracy

Author(s):

Ya-Hsuan WangHsin-Jen Chen

Conference:

ECER 2008

Network:

3. Curriculum Innovation by Schools and Teachers

Format:

Paper

Session Information

03 SES 10A, Learning Resources

Paper Session

Time:

2008-09-12

14:45-16:15

Room:

B2 216

Chair:

Jan van den Akker

Contribution

The paper is a critical social research on curriculum ideology which is concerned with the cultural politics. The discourses in textbooks convey the powers and political interests of different groups in order to transmit specific curriculum ideologies. This research is engaged in developing a CDA framework for analyzing ideology in school curriculum. It firstly focuses on textbooks analysis of Social Studies, and then analyzes the pedagogic discourses of Social Studies teachers. As soon as the CDA framework is proved as a successful tool of ideological analysis, the research shall use it to analyze the political, class and gender ideologies in textbooks as well as in classroom discourses. The purpose of this research is 1. To do critical discourse analysis on the ethnic ideologies in the Social Studies textbooks used in Taiwan’s authoritarian period; 2. To do critical discourse analysis on the ethnic ideologies in the Social Studies textbooks used in Taiwan’s democratic period; 3. To analyze the historical change of ethnic discourses in the Social Studies textbooks; 4. To do critical discourse analysis on the ethnic ideologies in the Social Studies teachers in their classrooms; 5. To analyze the changing discourses and the unchanged discourses of the Social Studies teachers on ethnic ideologies.

Method

The established CDA framework constitutes three stages: epistemological selection, methodological processing, and discourses induction. It targets on answering the following questions: (1)How are persons named and referred to linguistically? (2)What traits, characteristics, qualities and features are attributed to them? (3)By means of what arguments and argumentation schemes do specific persons or social groups try to justify and legitimise the exclusion, discrimination, suppression and exploitation of others? (4)From what perspective or point of view are these namings, attributions and arguments expressed? (5)Are the respective discriminating utterances articulated overtly, are they even intensified or are they mitigated?

Expected Outcomes

I conclude that CDA can act as a critical methodology for textbook analysis by giving special focus on the complexity of the politics of textbooks as well as the submerged ideologies behind the texts. The CDA framework has enabled to extract five discourses presented in the textbook. The discourse of nomination officially acknowledges the four ethnic groups in Taiwan. The discourses of predication and argumentation recognise, on the one hand, various ethnicities by using appreciative language, yet excluding certain ethnicities and discouraging ethnic identity by using derogatory language on the other. The dualistic discourses of inclusion/exclusion and intensification/mitigation particularly exemplify the Government's ambivalence toward Taiwan's multi-ethnic reality. They appear to include and intensify all the groups, yet divulge the discourses of exclusion and mitigation that I view as discourses of non-recognition.

References

Fritzsche, K. P. (1992). "Prejudice and underlying assumptions." In History and Social Studies---Methodologies of Textbook Analysis, ed. H. Bourdillon. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger B.V. Luke, A. (1997). “Critical discourse analysis.” In Lawrence J. Saha (Ed.), International encyclopedia on the sociology of education (pp.50-56). Oxford: Pergamon. Reisigl, M., and Wodak, R. (2001). Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge. Titscher, S., Meyer, M., Wodak, R., and Vetter, E. (2000). Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis. Trans. by Bryan Jenner. London: SAGE. van Dijk, T. A. (1995). “Discourse analysis as ideological analysis.” In C. Schäffner & A. Wenden (Eds.), Language and pace (pp. 17-33). Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing. Wang, Y-H. (2004). Ethnic identity and ethnic recognition: A study of Taiwanese teachers' biographies, curriculum and pedagogy. Unpublished PhD dissertation, the University of Cambridge, UK. Wang, Y-H. (2005). Critical discourse analysis for the Social Studies textbook: A methodological reconstruction. Bulletin of Educational Research, 51 (2), 67-97. Wang, Y-H. & Yu, C-J. (2007). Critical discourse analysis on political ideologies in the fifth grade Social-Study textbooks. Journal of the National Institute for Compilation and Trams;atopm, 35 (4), 39-50. Wodak, R., de Cillia, R., Reisigl, M., and Liebhart, K. (1999). The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Trans. by A. Hirsch and R. Mitten. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Author Information

Ya-Hsuan Wang

National Chung Cheng University

Institute of Education

Chia-Yi

215

Hsin-Jen Chen

National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan

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