Defining diversity: a critical discourse analysis of public educational texts

ABSTRACT

With this paper we present findings from a cultural studies project that aims to illuminate and define the various, sometimes overlapping, conceptions of diversity in public educational discourses. We do so via a critical discourse analysis of select political texts: namely speeches by former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that reference diversity as a focal point of intervention and reform (national and international in scope). We begin with a general overview of literature outlining diversity’s historical links to the education sector, after which we describe our theoretical framework, data sources, and methodology. Next, we present the study’s findings through the lens of two paramount themes: diversity as an economic input and diversity as a democratic input. To conclude, we provide discussions based on these findings, point to an overall lack of effort regarding the meaningful implementation of diversity policies, and suggest potential avenues for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical discourse analysis
• diversity
• education policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We use the term ‘targeted’ here (as opposed to other commonly used terms like ‘minority’ or ‘marginalized’) to refer to individuals and communities that have not simply been excluded from full participation in public discourse due to some perceived lack of knowledge, income, training, ability, and/or equipment, but have also been actively marginalized by larger social systems that maintain asymmetrical relations of power and dominance. In its most general iteration, the term refers to those student populations that Artiles, Kozleski, Trent, Osher, and Ortiz (2010) refer to as historically underserved, which describes individuals from ‘diverse racial, cultural, linguistic, and economically disadvantaged backgrounds who have experienced sustained school failure over time’ (pp. 279–278).

2 The only text that targets diversity explicitly is a statement in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which addressed the affirmative action admissions policies of the University of Texas, Austin.

3 Neoliberalism is a late twentieth century global shift in political and economic ideology that calls for market-based state policies over those which promote the welfare state and government control of economic and social activities (See, e.g. Harvey, 2005).

4 Although conversations about the extent to which our schools are providing equitable educations are certainly not new (e.g. Civil Rights era; see Tyack, 1974; Tyack & Cuban, 1997), the specific language of the ‘achievement gap’ began to animate the discourse of education reform in the 1990s.

5 Discourse is able to construct subjectivities that regulate conduct by defining how individual agents understand, talk about, and act within particular social sites. However, it also empowers these agents to act upon these sites, and so provides the space in which to ‘separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think’ (Foucault, 2007, p. 114). Within the production and consumption of discourse, then, there exists an element of power that is potentially transformative, generative, and capable of deconstructing the master narratives that so often lie hidden (Barker, 2012; Foucault, 1982, 1990, 1995; see also, Hall, 1997).