“Genre Means …”: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Fourth Grade Talk About Genre

Critical Discourse Analysis in Literacy Education: A Review of the Literature

“…Some of these analyses only briefly attended to multimodality, peripherally integrating a description of body positioning, gesture, or image. Other articles included a more in‐depth treatment of multimodality (e.g., Marshall & Toohey, ; Mosley & Rogers, ; Schaenen, ; Wohlwend, ; P.A. Young, ).…”

“…Examples of studies that examine the discursive construction of policies include Dennis (), Gibb (), Hamilton and Pitt (), Johnson (, ), and Yamagami (). Other literacy researchers are interested in specific genres, such as young adolescent literature (e.g., Glenn, ; R. Rogers & Christian, ; Schieble ), or the notion of genre itself (e.g., Schaenen, ). Dworin and Bomer () and Agiro () set out to examine texts that were widely used in professional development and high school English classrooms, respectively.…”

“…With respect to the studies based on interactions ( N = 29), we found four primary themes across the aggregated set of findings. These themes included the following: Teaching and learning of English as a second language, including transformations in learner and teacher identity (Gebhard, ; Gu, , ; Martinez‐Roldan, 2005; Martinez‐Roldan & Malave, 2004; Michael‐Luna, ; Souto‐Manning, ) Sociocultural assumptions, including those regarding immigrants and immigration (Graff, ) Racial constructs (Assaf & Dooley, ; Michael‐Luna, ; Mosley & Rogers, ; R. Rogers & Mosley, , ; Trainor, ) Gender (Clarke, ; Martinez‐Roldan, 2005; Peterson & Calovini, ; Richardson, ; Wohlwend, , ) Educator professional development and educators as mediators of educational reform (Comber & Cormack, ; Crumpler et al, ; Graff, ; Haddix, ) Instructional design and practice (Crumpler et al, ; Kumagai, ; Moita‐Lopes, ; Mosley & Rogers, ; Rocha‐Schmid, ; Schaenen, ; van Sluys, Lewison, & Flint, ) …”

“…Specifically within this latter set of findings germane to instructional design, we noticed that four of the analyses disclosed vexing, problematic, or tension‐filled teaching practices or decisions that resulted in complex learning outcomes. In these cases, CDA helped researchers and teacher researchers illuminate both the source and the course of these cross‐communications (Christiansen, ; Crumpler et al., ; Moita‐Lopes, ; Rocha‐Schmid, ; Schaenen, ).…”

“…Their findings include a critical analysis of how their talk reifies categories of disability. Reflexivity was central to other studies, including Rocha‐Schmid (), Schaenen (), and Souto‐Manning ().…”