Critical Discourse Studies and Curriculum Development in Trinidad and Tobago: Exploring Discursive Practices in Education Policy

This chapter examines language curricula and related education policy documents in Trinidad and Tobago using Critical Discourse Studies given that CDS can provide “the tools for addressing the complexity of movement across educational sites, practices and systems in a world where equalities are global in scope” (Rogers, Critical discourse analysis in education, 2nd edn. Routledge, p. 2, 2011). Through critical lenses, this chapter traces the development of the National English Language Arts curricula for lower secondary schools in Trinidad and Tobago from conceptualization at the turn of this century, to the writing and enacting of three sets of national documents in 2002, 2008 and 2015. The analytical procedures used for this study were drawn primarily from Fairclough’s (1995) threethree-part model for analysing a communicative event or interaction (the text, the discourse practice, the sociocultural practice), and were further supported by Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics and Genette’s transtextuality model. The analysis highlights the role of education policy documents as ideological constructs, legitimising as well as challenging language education practices with each curriculum revision.