An exploration of the ideology in economic and management sciences textbooks : a critical discourse analysis.
Year: 2012
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Pupils acquire skills, knowledge, values and attitudes through the important institution of \n \neducation. An essential tool used in the transmission of these socially approved attitudes and \n \nvalues is the textbook. Because teacher content knowledge is an ongoing challenge in South \n \nAfrica, school textbooks are being viewed as an important source of content knowledge. \n \nTextbooks used in the apartheid era in South Africa were subjects of numerous studies which \n \nfound that textbooks were capable of transmitting the dominant ideology of the then \n \napartheid government. Given the important role that textbooks are expected to play in postapartheid \n \nSouth African classroom, it becomes crucial to examine the ideologies being \n \nreflected and transmitted through this medium of instruction in the post-apartheid era. This \n \nstudy therefore set out to explore the ideologies that are manifest in Economic and \n \nManagement Sciences (EMS) textbooks. \n \nThis study adopted a qualitative research approach and engaged the tenets of Critical \n \nDiscourse Analysis (CDA) as its methodological framework. The use of CDA revealed how \n \nthe content of the selected EMS textbooks represent particular ideologically orientations. The \n \ndominant discourses that emerged from the analysis were the stereotypical positioning of \n \ngender roles (a subjugation of women; contingency of women‟s success on male support); \n \nentrepreneurship leads to wealth creation; the advocacy of a free-market system; \n \nreinforcement of the hegemonic positioning of business; deficient service provisioning as a \n \nnormality; business and production‟s precedence over the environment and finally that \n \nglobalisation is natural and unproblematic. These discourses disclose that the textbooks under \n \nstudy have profound strains of neoliberal ideology. The content of the textbooks legitimates \n \nthe values of the free market system and neoliberalism as it reinforces and reifies the \n \nnormality of personal wealth accumulation and individual endeavour. EMS textbooks were \n \nthus found to have potential as hegemonic tools capable of influencing pupils toward \n \nassimilating and accepting the ideology of neo-liberalism as being natural, ethical, moral and \n \nacceptable.
Author: Roshnee. David
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2095628525