Critical Discourse Analysis of Assumptions Within Secondary English Language Arts Textbook Content

This thesis for a Master of Arts in Teaching explores a selection from a secondary English Language Arts (ELA) textbook. The research questions that guide my paper are: 1) What assumptions about teaching and learning are present within secondary ELA textbooks? 2) How does the format and content of a secondary ELA teacher's guide aim to direct teachers' curriculum and coverage of academic content standards? 3) How does the format and content of a secondary ELA teacher's guide aim to influence the feedback teachers give to students about responding to literature? 4) How does the format and content of a secondary ELA students' textbook aim to shape students' learning and influence students' responses to literature? My research questions aim to clarify how textbook content is presented to students and teachers and how students and teachers might experience textbooks. Using a structured methodology and theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis and a Freirean theoretical lens of the banking and dialogic pedagogical models of instruction, I analyzed textbook content. The independent research textbook content review is analysis of a selection from California's adopted Eighth grade ELA teacher's edition textbook. Textbooks carry assumptions about what is valuable teaching pedagogy and ways to effectively address academic content standards. My data find that the textbook content shows assumptions that proscribe the meaning of the story to students, tightly guides instruction for teachers based on ideological norms about curricular structure, and incompletely covers the academic content standard it addresses.