1. Presented by Xi Wang September 3rd, 2008
Using Critical Discourse Analysis in Exploring the Nature of Communication among School Participants: A Case Study of an International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme Serving Chinese Students
Presented by Xi Wang
September 3rd, 2008

2. Background to the Research
Development of International Baccalaureate Diploma Programmes
The value of intercultural understanding (the IBO)
The design of IB curricula intends to deepen school participants’ understanding of both foreign and native cultures, to improve their abilities to communicate with others and to promote a positive attitude to learning.
Research Aims

3. The social constructionst perspective of ‘learning’ and ‘learners’
Conceptual Framework
The social constructionst perspective of ‘learning’ and ‘learners’
Learning is an ongoing process of social participation, which suggests not only engaging in certain activities, but also being active participants in certain relationship networks and constructing identities of membership.
Learning participating in ‘communities of practice’ a process of negotiating meaning

4. the Social dimension of learning
negotiation of meaning and its social contexts
The ‘negotiated’ nature of communication
(meaning-making in the service of power)
The ‘social’ nature of communication
(meaning-making in sets of social networks)

5. Fairclough’s framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
The discursive role of semiotic elements of social life: language does not objectively mirror the world, but rather plays an active role in constructing meaning and social relations.
Fairclough’s framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
The critical intention: to uncover and explain the role of discursive practice in the construction and maintenance of unequal power relations
Key concept: orders of discourse
The dialectical relations between discourses and other moments of social practice
Discourses are both ‘constituted’ and ‘constitutive’.

6. Research Questions
How did certain classroom participants, from a variety of cultural backgrounds, describe the status of communication among them?
What were the power relations among these teachers and students, and how did they evolve through the communication process?
How was the participants’ sense of self constructed and transformed through communication?
How did the power relations and identities affect the participants’, especially the students’, access to negotiation of meaning?
How were the participants’ shifting power relations related to the contingent organisational and social contexts?

7. Three main approaches
To enter a naturalistic setting and to study the communication process in its natural state
The ethnographic approach
To provide an holistic picture of the communication web in a specific time-and-space bounded system
Single case study
To analyse language beyond words and sentences for meanings that are related to power
Textually centred approach of CDA

8. Methodology Selecting the Case and Research Participants
students, teachers and the lead teacher in one class
This sample enabled me to explore the communication web in its entirety and in a natural context.
Data Collection
classroom observation
interviews (ethnographic and semi-structured interviews)
Data Analysis
Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework of CDA
a two-stage analytical framework consisting of interpretation of meaning and explanation of power

9. Research Findings
Patterns of discursive practice adopted in different lessons
- Teacher’s large group instruction
- Teacher-student conversations
(the initiation-response-evaluation structure)
- Peer discussions
Discourses of communication (for each participant) and the (re) production of ideology (across participants)
Issues for improvement
Improving teachers’ self-reflexivity and multicultural Awareness
Reforming organisational structures

10. How does my research contribute to the case?
Reasons for the restricted communication
Possible ways of empowering students
How does my research contribute to theories of learning and communication?
building into these theories the dynamism inherent in the discursive role of language