Choice and control: corpus-based discourse analysis of teacher education policy in England (2010-2021)

Abstract

Education policy in recent years has dramatically repositioned the role and status of teachers, trainee teachers and teacher education in the UK and beyond. This paper focuses specifically on education policy in England; however, it has broader significance for those interested in education and teacher education in international policy contexts. Two corpora were constructed for the project; one collated education policy documents in 2010–2021, and another collated education policy documents in 1970–2009. The analysis used the corpus linguistic tool Wordsmith 8. Keywords, concordance, and collocation, were used to examine themes within the discourse of the focus corpus, supported by a critical policy discourse analysis frame. The themes identified in this analysis were governance (control) and marketisation (choice). These themes have strong connections to analyses of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) and contribute to understanding how education policy discourses can frame teacher education. The positioning of trainee teachers as both product and subject of initial teacher education in education policy documents is explored in the analysis.