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Using CDA to Explore Communication in an IB Diploma Programme for Chinese Students

This case study examines the nature of communication among participants in an International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme serving Chinese students. It utilizes Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to uncover power relations, identities, and the negotiation of meaning. The study also proposes ways to improve communication and empower students.

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Using CDA to Explore Communication in an IB Diploma Programme for Chinese Students

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  1. Using Critical Discourse Analysis in Exploring the Nature of Communication among School Participants: A Case Study of an International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme Serving Chinese Students Presented by Xi Wang September 3rd, 2008

  2. Background to the Research • Development of International Baccalaureate Diploma Programmes • The value of intercultural understanding(the IBO) The design of IB curricula intends to deepen school participants’ understanding of both foreign and native cultures, to improve their abilities to communicate with others and to promote a positive attitude to learning. • Research Aims

  3. Conceptual Framework • The social constructionst perspective of ‘learning’ and ‘learners’ Learning is an ongoing process of social participation, which suggests not only engaging in certain activities, but also being active participants in certain relationship networks and constructing identities of membership. Learning participating in ‘communities of practice’ a process of negotiating meaning

  4. the Social dimension of learning negotiation of meaning and its social contexts The ‘negotiated’ nature of communication (meaning-making in the service of power) The ‘social’ nature of communication (meaning-making in sets of social networks)

  5. Discourse Analysis The discursive role of semiotic elements of social life: language does not objectively mirror the world, but rather plays an active role in constructing meaning and social relations. Fairclough’s framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) The critical intention: to uncover and explain the role of discursive practice in the construction and maintenance of unequal power relations Key concept: orders of discourse The dialectical relations between discourses and other moments of social practice Discourses are both ‘constituted’ and ‘constitutive’.

  6. Research Questions • How did certain classroom participants, from a variety of cultural backgrounds, describe the status of communication among them? • What were the power relations among these teachers and students, and how did they evolve through the communication process? • How was the participants’ sense of self constructed and transformed through communication? • How did the power relations and identities affect the participants’, especially the students’, access to negotiation of meaning? • How were the participants’ shifting power relations related to the contingent organisational and social contexts?

  7. Three main approaches • To enter a naturalistic setting and to study the communication process in its natural state The ethnographic approach • To provide an holistic picture of the communication web in a specific time-and-space bounded system Single case study • To analyse language beyond words and sentences for meanings that are related to power Textually centred approach of CDA

  8. Methodology • Selecting the Case and Research Participants students, teachers and the lead teacher in one class This sample enabled me to explore the communication web in its entirety and in a natural context. • Data Collection classroom observation interviews (ethnographic and semi-structured interviews) • Data Analysis Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework of CDA a two-stage analytical frameworkconsisting of interpretation of meaning and explanation of power

  9. Research Findings • Patterns of discursive practice adopted in different lessons - Teacher’s large group instruction - Teacher-student conversations (the initiation-response-evaluation structure) - Peer discussions • Discourses of communication(for each participant)and the (re) production of ideology(across participants) • Issues for improvement Improving teachers’ self-reflexivity and multicultural Awareness Reforming organisational structures

  10. How does my research contribute to the case? Reasons for the restricted communication Possible ways of empowering students • How does my research contribute to theories of learning and communication? building into these theories the dynamism inherent in the discursive role of language

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