When I think of the relationship between practices, research and policy, I guess this relationship is partially reciprocal but policy is more controllable to practices and research. It is reciprocal because policy is built on past practices and research; and research informs policy makers and teachers with information about learners, teaching methods, and effectiveness of teaching and so on. However, policy seems controllable in that it selectively chooses research in order to support particular policy; and in that it controls practices with what to teach and how and when to teach particular knowledge. I remember that when I taught in Korea, teachers had scripted teacher’s manuals for each subject area. Those teacher’s manuals had guidelines about activities, materials, and questions. Most of all, these manuals are highly suggested in order to prepare students to take (standardized) tests because teachers in a particular secondary school are expected to teach same contents emphasized in teacher’s manuals in a given period of time.
Reading Woodside-Jiron’s article helps me consider more how policy is driven by power and ideology of certain group in society, and such ideology often reflects values and beliefs of a certain group, how research is selectively used to support policy. While it was challenging to read this article, it was interesting to follow through her analysis using Critical Discourse Analysis. I felt that CDA seems a useful tool to look into policy because it allows us to look into embedded meanings of language used in policy and how those embedded meanings were interconnected with significant events around decision making on policy. I appreciate three dimensional ways of analyzing policy in order to show, I guess, how authority is established through language, how policy establishes what is right in reading instruction, and how power and ideology come into play in decision making process.
In the meantime, I am wondering about Woodside-Jiron’s process of analyzing policy using CDA: how Woodside-Jiron decided the embedded meanings of language and connected the embedded meanings to events or values or beliefs. In addition, I am also wondering how other researchers used Critical Discourse Analysis.
