Resultados variando parámetros del controlador predictivo 62

The discourse around EAL is represented in this thesis by key governmental policies and documentation on EAL in text and photographic images. The terms ‘policies’ and ‘documentation’ or ‘documents’ are used interchangeably irrespective of

documentation being statutory or intended as guidance. Rather than purely ‘research

for policy’, the study presents ‘research on policy’, taking ‘a critical view of policy’ (Ozga 2000:96-97, original emphasis), as

… close reading of policy texts helps to generate critical, informed and independent responses to policy. Reading and interpreting texts can be an act of engagement with policy, for the researcher and those with whom she or he works (ibid:107).

‘With whom she or he works’ are in this project the wider school workforce and BMLC

learners themselves. Through their indirect engagement with policy via this study, I hope to raise awareness of positioning via discourses and to create space for possible rupture and resistance. Developing alternative discourses might finally influence policy. I follow Ball’s (2006:44) understanding of policies as ‘processes and outcomes’ and his division of ‘policy as text’ addressing agency and ‘policy as discourse’ addressing structure (Ball 2015:311; 2006). The study treats Ball’s two conceptualisations of policy as intertwined as he states “policy is not one or the other, but both, they are ‘implicit in each other’” (Ball 2006:44). Policies as text change, they are always in “a state of ‘becoming’” (ibid), and depending on interests interpreted

78 situated, it “does not arrive ‘out of the blue’… neither does it enter a social or institutional vacuum” (ibid:45). Ball summarises for policy analysis what this research

is attempting to achieve by combining policy analysis with phenomenography:

Policy analysis requires not an understanding that is based on constraint or

agency but on the changing relationships between constraint and agency and their inter-penetration. (Ball 2006:48).

The above quotation addresses the link between the two conceptualisations of policy as text and as discourse. The effect of policy as discourse is to limit possibilities of “thinking ‘otherwise’” and ‘our responses to change’ (Ball 2006:49). Investigation of

policy as discourse allows us to think and respond differently and to submit to, challenge or resist positioning and constituted power relations.

As many more policy texts are produced by systems than can be analysed in a research project ofthis size, choices of documentation had to be made and justified (Ozga 2000). My choice adopted a ‘clients’-perspective (Ozga 2000:98) as it evolves around the constitution of the ‘EAL learner’. Government documentation around the issue of

EAL is extensive, however not necessarily current. Current guidance seems to refer frequently to previous documentation developed under the coalition government (2010-2015) or even further back under New Labour (1997-2010). This implies that less importance is given to BMLC learners’ academic and mental well-being and other educational issues than previously. The documents for this study, my selection from the ‘archive’, ‘the domain of things said’ (Gillies 2013:13) about EAL, were chosen

to cover a variety of documentation: general government guidance on EAL provision in schools, specific subject guidance booklets, Teaching Standards for ITE and practising teachers, EAL Nexus, the National Curriculum 2014, Ofsted documentation

79 and guidance by Naldic. The choice of documents was based on importance, a rather subjective criterion that once more demonstrates the researcher being part of the research. My choice of documents was mainly based on importance for ITE as it is part of my role as teacher educator to decide to which documents to introduce trainee teachers. Unless all government documentation around EAL were examined, an element of subjective choice remains. The analysis of the documentation aimed to develop areas of positioning via the dominant discourse. I am aware that positioning and subjectivities are not due to exposure to one single discourse but several discourses (Mac an Ghaill 1994). In this study, the six areas of positioning could all be interpreted as individual discourses, for instance the discourse of EAL and underachievement or the discourse of EAL and ‘race’. Whenever I speak of the prevailing or dominant

discourse I refer to the different discourses I established from the documentation. Other researchers might have extracted different, or fewer or more areas. BMLC learners are also exposed to other discourses, for example, cultural discourses, however, the focus of this study is on the subjection to official educational discourse(s).

The genealogical analysis (Carabine 2001, Scheurich and Bell McKenzie 2005, Graham 2005) of the documentation is based on an investigation into the power- knowledge interrelations that produce and continue to sustain the discourse around ‘EAL learners’ (Gillies 2013). It investigates language and discursive strategies used

to constitute and position the ‘typical EAL learner’ (MacLure 2003; Wetherell et al 2013a, 2013b). It also explores their relation to previous and accompanying documents, presentation, background and rationale to establish what kind of ‘reality’

80 2010; Flick 2009) and how the text constructs its subject (Ozga 2000) which also involves elements of Foucauldian archaeology (Gillies 2013). Questions are directed at the documentation such as why is it produced at this time, what is going on in society/education, what types of statements, ideas, and concepts are being used, what is absent from the discourse and how are expressions used; can specific discourses be identified, i.e. the discourse of care or ‘race’, and what ideological framework and arguments are being used and what are they trying to accomplish?

Applying these criteria and asking these questions, the documents were read repeatedly recording areas which were continually reorganised until the ‘final’ six main areas emerged. As Ozga (2000:105) writes

Reading and re-reading of texts, and groups of related texts, reveals the reiteration of phrases and key words that encapsulate policy makers’ assumptions, while the tone also suggests what is felt about how things should happen.

It is the ‘discourses and rhetorical strategies that bear power in their articulation of a representation of the world that positions subjects … in particular ways’ (Francis

2015:440) which I focus on in the analysis of government documentation and subsequently the staff interviews.