CCU 8 - Great Expectations? Critical Discourse Analysis of Title I School–Family Compacts

Citation

Evans, M. S, and Radina Rachel. (2014). Great Expectations? Critical Discourse Analysis of Title I School–Family Compacts. School Community Journal, 24(2), 107-126. 

Summary

This article entitled “Great Expectations? Critical Discourse Analysis of Title I School–Family Compacts” is talking about the way of discourse documents contributes to the framing of family, school, and community partnerships and also the role of power in the compacts. Title I compacts primarily reinforce hierarchical models of parental involvement and emphasize transactional encounters over and above partnership activity. Title I is a federal program providing additional funds to districts and schools with high percentages of children who are economically disadvantaged. School–parent compact outlines the activities that the parents, school staff, and students will undertake to build and develop a partnership to help the children achieve to the State’s high academic standards. It assumes that a lack of awareness is the primary cause for disengagement and fails to consider the possibility that more systemic issues may be involved. For example, school outreach efforts are often focused on changing the behaviors of minority and low-income families so they are more aligned and supportive of the goals of school leaders.

The methods are critical discourse analysis (CDA) and corpus linguistics, by the discourses in Title I school–family compacts largely reinforces school-centric family involvement models. Second, the relationships between actors in the compacts are primarily transactional in nature, and there is little discussion of partnership work. Third, students are primarily cast as objects in school– family compacts with little agency in their own education. These findings were consistent across the sample regardless of school level or the racial makeup of the student population. 

Implementation

Language is all about feelings. Discourse and its critical analysis must be a great deal between the teachers.