عنوان

A discursive analysis of education policy documentation under the Conservative Liberal Government in England

TLets576975

A discursive analysis of education policy documentation under the Conservative Liberal Government in England

[Thesis]

Betzel, Anne

Institute of Education, University of London

2013

Ph.D.

Institute of Education, University of London

2013

This thesis discusses the relationship between education policy under the UKliberal conservative coalition government and neoliberal discourse. The thesis arguesthat neoliberal discourse provides a way of organising and legitimising specificrationalities around a political economic agenda in which deregulated markets, freetrade and individual property rights are regarded as essential for human well-being,and presents a particular set of ideas as common-sensical and true. Education policyis here understood as the embodiment of a set of claims which initiate particularpractices and privilege neoliberal visions.The analytical framework combines a theoretical re-formulation of the discourse-historicalapproach in critical discourse analysis with theories of argumentation. Avariety of argumentative fallacies of neoliberal discourse are presented in order toillustrate the way in which they close off substantive dialogue with alternative views.The thesis relates contemporary education policy to the pursuit of political strategiesand to particular forms of recontextualization of social-democratic discourses andemancipatory ideals. The thesis argues that this recontextualisation reveals the wayin which education policy is subject to contradictory claims and dynamics ofneoliberalism as well as emancipation as part of an entangled progressive discourse,and that neoliberal discourse is utilised in a way which transforms and subsumesdemocratising claims into a functionalist rhetoric. The thesis further discusses thenormative backgrounds underlying argumentation and the way in which the claim tobe non-/post-ideological functions in order to obscure the contradictions withincontemporary education policy, by universalising and naturalising particularneoliberal ideological and moral perspectives.The thesis may be regarded as a form of discourse politics which problematisesthe positioning of what is valued to be 'true', 'normal' or 'good' within educationpolicy in late capitalism. In this way it engages with concepts and assumptionspresented as givens, and highlights their provisionality.

Betzel, Anne

Institute of Education, University of London

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y