Moving targets: A critical discourse analysis of literacy, ideology, and standards in English language arts teacher preparation guidelines

The following dissertation describes a critical discourse analysis of the National Council of Teachers of English's 1996 Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of the English Language Arts. It proceeds from the premise that literacy has expanded beyond traditional print-based practices to include literacies related to new technologies, diverse social groups, and social issues including economic shifts and transformations in work and social discourses. Meanwhile, the discourse of accountability documents in English education operates to constrain the integration of new literacies into the traditional curriculum. By analyzing the Guidelines at multiple levels, the author seeks to understand how discourse practices related to accountability interact with English educators' deployment of knowledge about their field as they design curricula for preparing new professionals.;The study addresses the following questions: (1) How do the 1996 Guidelines represent English language arts and English teacher education? (2) What discourses are at play in these representations? and (3) What are the potential consequences of these representations?;These questions are addressed through literature reviews in the New Literacy Studies, the history of NCTE and the teaching of English, standards-based reform in the English language arts, and accountability theory. These reviews represent the sociocultural and sociopolitical context for the textual analysis that constitutes the study. Chapter 3 describes the study's methodology, including the nature of critical discourse analysis theory and its function in activist scholarship, the analysis of ideologies, and the creation of spaces for difference and change in discourse communities. Chapter 4 describes the methods used to select, transcribe, and code data, and also discusses the analytical process used to develop findings, situating the author as an English teacher, teacher educator, and researcher who is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English. Chapter 5 offers a descriptive analysis of the NCTE Guidelines, discussing the social actors represented in the text. Chapter 6 describes the use of language in the Guidelines and highlights patterns in the use of terms central to literacy curricula. Chapter 7 describes the ways in which the Guidelines' use of "effective teaching" as a central construct, its explicit accommodation of the national education accountability movement, and its deployment of accountability philosophies function ideologically to produce a framework for English education that is potentially inequitable. Chapter 8 concludes the study with a discussion of the findings and their implications for curriculum design and professional activity in both the National Council of Teachers of English and the field of literacy and English language arts in general.