Date of Award
Spring 2022
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
Educational Studies
First Advisor
Kara D. Brown
Abstract
Using the discourse historical approach (DHA), this thesis examined how actors from diverse educational settings (federal, state, and districts) discursively constructed the identity of the English learners (ELs) during the appropriation of new educational policy (i.e., ESSA of 2015). This study intended to understand how both “human” and “non-human” educational actors (i.e., the texts of the educational policy and the key actors responsible for the appropriation of the ESSA of 2015) construct and position the identity of ELs in relations of power and knowledge and how the macro-policy discourse shapes how policies are interpreted at the meso- and micro-level. The (mis)representation emerged as the overarching constructing strategy used in both data sets to achieve the discursive construction of ELs’ identities. Whereas the public and the private texts employed the same discursive strategies, they used them to construct a divergent representation of ELs’ identity, which I defined as (mis)representation through omission (public texts) and powerless (mis)representation (private texts). Moreover, the data showed that the (dis)connect between the two discourses negatively impacts the ELs’ identity and educational opportunities.
Rights
© 2022, Nicoleta Hodis
Recommended Citation
Hodis, N.(2022). No One Is Ever Going to Acknowledge the Language That You Speak”: A Discourse Historical Approach to the Construction of English Learners’ Identity in Federal Policy. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/6714