Searching for hidden assumptions: a critical discourse analysis of British Columbia’s Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreement policy

Tarasoff, Lawrence Alexander Michael (2019) Searching for hidden assumptions: a critical discourse analysis of British Columbia’s Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreement policy. Ed.D thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

There exists persistent disparity in the achievement of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal public school students in British Columbia (BC), Canada. The international literature stresses that education has the power to improve the lives and futures of indigenous peoples through the use of government policy. With that in mind, this study sets out to critically analyse BC’s Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreement (EA) policy texts to better understand how Aboriginal education in BC is shaped, formed and reformed in the production and interpretation of the province’s policy discourses. The study makes use of interviews and Fairclough’s (2015) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to uncover the discursive and social factors at play in the production and interpretation of BC’s EA policy from the time of its creation in 1999 through to the Ministry of Education announcing their withdrawal from directly supporting the policy in 2016. The study concludes that the processes involved in EA policy production and interpretation within the broad social conditions and specific institutional settings of BC education may combine to sustain the current power relationships within Aboriginal education in BC. However, in some cases, the agency of policy interpreters does allow them to resist those aspects of the policy’s discourses which place western educational value over traditional cultural understandings. Thus, the production and interpretation of BC’s EA policy discourse is both normative and creative and acts to both sustain and subvert the current power relationships between those producing and interpreting the policy.

• Item Type: Thesis (Ed.D)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Dducation policy, British Columbia, indigenous, Aboriginal, Critical Discourse Analysis.
• Subjects: L Education > L Education (General)
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Education
• Supervisor's Name: Schweisfurth, Dr. Michele
• Date of Award: 2019
• Depositing User: Mr Lawrence A M Tarasoff
• Unique ID: glathesis:2019-75146
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 08 Nov 2019 11:52
• Last Modified: 17 Aug 2022 16:22
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.75146
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/75146