Prescribing literacies: a critical discourse analysis of the Australian literacy policies 1987 – 1998

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Faculty of Education, La Trobe University, Bendigo.

This study examines critically the discursive accounts of literacy and the successful literate student in the Australian Commonwealth literacy policy documents 1987–1998. This analysis clarifies the ideological Discourses informing the policy outcomes by examining the constructions of literacy and the successful literate student in these documents. A critical discourse analysis lens, combining the theoretical frameworks and methods of Norman Fairclough (2003) and James Gee (1999, 2005), is used to examine the ways in which literacy and the successful literate student are envisaged at the different textual levels of each policy document. This analysis at the macro, meso, and micro levels of text identifies the extent of thematic cohesion within and across texts, as well as the textual strategies used to legitimise the value positions within each policy. Use of a critical discourse analysis lens also provides a systematic method for identifying where alternative perspectives of literacy and the successful literate student could be found in the documents, and directions for future socially just Commonwealth literacy policy. This study identified three key constructs of literacy in the documents, informed by three different ideological perspectives. There is, however, little evidence of current perspectives of literacy as multiple literacies. Two dominant constructs of the successful literate student are evident in the policy documents, with potential for a third, again informed by different ideological Discourses. Comparison of the three policy documents, indicates change over time in the prescription of literacy and of successful literate outcomes, yet also provides a reference point for a more nuanced and complex imagining of literacy and the successful literate student.