scholarly journals Where are the children? Deconstructing the Ontario Autism Program

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abneet Kaur Atwal

The Ontario Autism Program (OAP) provides behavioural supports and services to autistic children and youth, and their families. This study applied a critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine the OAP policy documents using a children’s rights framework. The purpose of the study was to examine how autistic children’s rights are respected in the OAP policy documents. A CDA of the documents led to three key findings: the difference in roles of different social groups, quantifying and classifying autistic children, and the one size fits all approach in the program. The three themes present in the OAP policy documents are power and dominance, ideologies of childhood, and the medical model. The ways in which children are presented suggests that children’s rights are being neglected. The paper concludes with recommendations for how clinicians can facilitate children’s participation when implementing the program and changes required in the policy documents to incorporate a children’s rights framework. Keywords: autism, children’s rights, development, medical model, policy, power

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abneet Kaur Atwal

The Ontario Autism Program (OAP) provides behavioural supports and services to autistic children and youth, and their families. This study applied a critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine the OAP policy documents using a children’s rights framework. The purpose of the study was to examine how autistic children’s rights are respected in the OAP policy documents. A CDA of the documents led to three key findings: the difference in roles of different social groups, quantifying and classifying autistic children, and the one size fits all approach in the program. The three themes present in the OAP policy documents are power and dominance, ideologies of childhood, and the medical model. The ways in which children are presented suggests that children’s rights are being neglected. The paper concludes with recommendations for how clinicians can facilitate children’s participation when implementing the program and changes required in the policy documents to incorporate a children’s rights framework. Keywords: autism, children’s rights, development, medical model, policy, power


Childhood ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67
Author(s):  
Guadalupe Francia ◽  
Silvia Edling

Drawing on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the article highlights various conceptions of violence at a Swedish boarding school and is based on a critical discourse analysis of different educational and media documents. The investigation indicates that ambitions to protect children from violence need to overcome the dichotomy of private and public in order to protect children affected by violence in the borderland between the private and public spheres.


Author(s):  
Alexandra-Niculina Babii

The digital era has determined a very easy creation and propagation of fake news. As a consequence, it has become harder for people to fight this malicious phenomenon. However, the only weapon that can have results in this informational war is critical thinking. But who should use it? The creators of fake news that do this for different reasons? The social platforms that allow the circulation of fake news with ease? Mass media which does not always verify with much attention and rigour the information they spread? The Governments that should apply legal sanctions? Or the consumer that receives all the fake news, him being the final target? Even if critical thinking would be useful for every actor on fake news’ stage, the one who needs it the most is the consumer. This comes together with the big responsibility placed on his shoulders. Even if others are creating and spreading disinformation, the consumer must be aware and be careful with the information he encounters on a daily basis. He should use his reasoning and he should not believe everything just because it is on the Internet. How can he do that? Critical thinking seems to be a quite difficult tool to use, especially for non-specialized individuals. This paper’s aim is to propose a simplified model of critical thinking that can contribute to detecting fake news with the help of people’s self judgement. The model is based on theories from Informal Logic considering the structure of arguments and on Critical Discourse Analysis theories concerning the patterns found in the content of the information.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Nazari

This paper is an attempt to analyse one of the documents which may affect the classroom activities of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, namely teachers' guides. It also explores the context at which the document is aimed and critiques how EFL teachers are advised to teach as well as how EFL is taught. As such, the paper stands where critical discourse analysis and language policy come together in the study of language policies in education. The teachers' guide chosen and the analysis carried out here are not necessarily concerned with their representativeness and typicality but with the opportunity they provide to the researchers and teachers to learn about such language policy documents and how language and language teaching objectives are represented in them. The issues raised in this paper will have relevance to the EFL teachers' guides and EFL education in other contexts, as these issues are likely to be true of other EFL milieux.


2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Donoghue

The work of Antonio Gramsci is important for the theoretical underpinnings of critical discourse analysis. However, many scholars’ engagement with Gramsci’s work within critical discourse analysis remains surprisingly thin. This article seeks to highlight the detriment to critical discourse analysis of having only a surface engagement with Gramsci. It critically assesses how Gramscian concepts such as hegemony and ‘common sense’ are currently employed within critical discourse analysis and provides more detailed discussion on the import of these concepts for critical discourse analysis. The article also argues that introducing the Gramscian concepts of the war of position and spontaneous and normative grammars enables the further realisation of critical discourse analysis’ ambition to be an emancipatory tool in political and social science. In so doing, the article contributes to work on critical discourse analysis as a method in political studies, particularly concerning the role of discourse in reproducing and maintaining asymmetrical power relations between classes and social groups, and potential challenges to this.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 117-131
Author(s):  
Vandana Lunyal

In the world that promotes consumerism, companies are in a competition to produce a variety of commodities and to convert people into consumers of their products whether they need them or not. The abundance of consumer products is promoted through advertisements. These advertisements persuade the common people to become consumers for which they use a variety of strategies, the most common being the use of problem-solution format in language and an effective use of the verbal and the non-verbal. This paper focuses on investigating the verbal and the non-verbal aspects of the text to examine how ideological constructs function in the discourse of advertisingthrough the use of hegemony. A perfume advertisement has been selected for a detailed analysis of the verbal and the visual elements to illustrate how advertisers commonly attempt to transmit some underlying, yet unasserted, meanings to unsuspecting readers who may understand the intentions of the advertisers i.e. to promote consumption but may not understand that the aim is achieved by generally promoting cultural stereotypes which work towards the disadvantage of one social group vis-à-vis the other especially the one that the advertisement is addressed to. The tool for the analysis of the advertisement is Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis (CDA) that uses the analysis of the verbal and the visual to reveal ideological underpinnings. CDA also has pedagogical implications for instance the language used for describing products, if analysed critically by language learners, helps them to unfold the hidden meanings as is illustrated through the analysis. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/nelta.v19i1-2.12085 Journal of NELTA, Vol 19 No. 1-2, December 2014: 117-131


2020 ◽  
pp. 147402222094482
Author(s):  
Eloise Symonds

Recognising the popularity of partnership models, this article questions the current literature on partnership within the humanities and explores the possibility of effectively implementing partnership within the English discipline, through exploration of the traditional modes of learning associated with specific disciplines and the barriers that exist through the traditional teacher-learner dynamic. It considers the difficulty of breaking down both the conventional learning methods of reading English and traditional hierarchies in universities in order to foster more collaborative processes. In this article, I use Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis to explore 32 interviews, 12 observations and 12 policy documents from two post-1992 English universities. Negotiating partnership models in the humanities requires further exploration, with attention given to conventional methods of learning associated with disciplines, traditional learner-teacher hierarchies and the structural barriers these associations create for establishing collaborative learning relationships between academics and undergraduates.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amber Gazso

In this article, I undertake a critical discourse analysis of policy documents and in-depth interviews with seven caseworkers and 28 benefit recipients to explore how two discourses, ‘work first’ and ‘distance from the labour market,’ inform how persons living with addiction access and then experience social assistance in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Drawing in Foucauldian insights on power, I reveal the conceptualisation of benefit recipients’ eligibility for Ontario Works through these two discourses and how this is replete with ideological assumptions and disciplining power relations, constitutive of a subject position of ‘the recovering addict’, and suggestive of social control implications. I argue that the coercion and regulation of benefit recipients’ lives on Ontario Works has not disappeared but transmuted for Torontonians living with addiction, and conclude by considering the governance of this population as biopower.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Claude Byungura ◽  
Henrik Hansson ◽  
Kamuzinzi Masengesho ◽  
Thashmee Karunaratne

Abstract With the development of technology in the 21st Century, education systems attempt to integrate technology-based tools to improve experiences in pedagogy and administration. It is becoming increasingly prominent to build human and ICT infrastructure capacities at universities from policy to implementation level. Using a critical discourse analysis, this study investigates the articulation of ICT capacity building strategies from both national and institutional ICT policies in Rwanda, focusing on the higher education. Eleven policy documents were collected and deeply analyzed to understand which claims of ICT capacity building are made. The analysis shows that strategies for building ICT capacities are evidently observed from national level policies and only in two institutional policies (KIST and NUR). Among 25 components of ICT capacity building used, the ones related to human capacity are not plainly described. Additionally, neither national nor institutional policy documents include the creation of financial schemes for students to acquire ICT tools whilst learners are key stakeholders. Although there is some translation of ICT capacity building strategies from national to some institutional policies, planning for motivation and provision of incentives to innovators is not stated in any of the institutional policies and this is a key to effective technology integration.


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