This must be the most well-attended UKLA conference to which I have been. It's packed out. Robin Alexander's Key Note speech was very good. He was talking about his experiences of working with politicians and how he noticed a clear split between the private and public discourse that went on. Meetings, he said, were always constructive with 'give and take' on both sides. Yet, the reports in the media from the same ministers were completely different, not reflecting the meetings at all.
Alexander provided us with what he saw as the 'discourses of power':
Discourse of dichotomy - a gross reduction by Ministers to binaries in education - traditional/progressive, real books/phonics
Discourse of Derision - headlines about 'weirdy beardies' taking over schools and universities for example.
Discourse of Myth - the idea, for example, that before New Labour the world of education was in chaos
Discourse of meaningless - the crazy government documents that can often say nothing
My paper in tomorrow...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment