A critical discourse analysis of SDG4 using the “Critical Dis(Cap)Ability Approach” and Van Aswegen et al.’s (2019) “Critical Discourse Problematization Framework”

• In Event: Policy Approaches to Inclusive Education by Governments and Schools

Proposal

This paper follows an article I recently wrote that proposes an original theoretical framework I coin the Critical Dis(Cap)Ability Approach (CDCA) which can be used for decolonial, intersectional, and inclusive educational work. The CDCA is a lens combining elements of Sen’s (1999) Capabilities Approach (CA) (particularly his emphasis on choice, free agency, capabilities, chosen life funcitonings, and well-being) and Annamma et al.’s (2013) Disability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit) framework, along with various components of decolonial thought. I use the CDCA to critically analyze Sustainable Development Goal 4 (inclusive education) (United Nations, 2015) in the previous piece but most heavily emphasize theory, presenting the CDCA in detail. This current article will reintroduce the CDCA and demonstrate how it can be applied to resist hegemonic and exclusionary education discourses and practices. This paper will, however, delve more deeply into and expand upon the method – the Critical Discourse Problematization Framework (Van Aswegen et al., 2019) – I used when analyzing SDG4. This follow-up article will demonstrate how the CDCA can help problematize and reorient education and development policies that rarely positively benefit multiply marginalized individuals on the ground. This blend of theory and method I employ can act as a tool to express dissent and protest the status quo of exclusionary education. I attend most specifically here to people at the intersections of race and dis/ability in global South.

Both the Capabilities Approach (CA) and Disability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit) scholars agree it is necessary to challenge dominant discourses, values, and education as exclusionary to those falling outside of current social, political, and economic power structures (i.e., see Annamma et al., 2013, 2022; Broderick, 2018; Sen, 2000). This speaks directly to the 2024 CIES conference theme: “The Power of Protest.” The Critical Dis(Cap)Ability Approach, therefore, proposes a restructuring of hegemonic education and development paradigms, in terms of what should be the “end goals” and the means to achieve these end goals. Sen (1999) challenges dominant and narrow views of development and the idea that certain social and political freedoms (i.e., basic education) are only conducive to “development” when they contribute to GDP growth or industrialization. He argues, rather, these substantive freedoms must be valued as “constituent components” (p. 5) of development. He claims that social and institutional arrangements should enact the value of equal concern, by aiming at equalizing people’s capability to function. It is through capabilities (real opportunities or real freedoms) and functionings (valued beings and doings) that educational equity, for example, (as supposedly promoted in SDG4) can be outlined.

Disability Critical Race Studies (Annamma et al., 2013) scholars argue not everyone has the capability to access or benefit from Eurocentric education, most often those at intersections of racial minority identity and dis/ability, in the global South (Sarkar et al, 2022), and these scholars track the impacts of societal barriers (equated here to Sen’s (“unfrredoms”) hindering multiply-marginalized oppressed persons (Annamma et al., 2022; Connor et al., 2015; Iqtadar et al., 2021; Padía & Traxler, 2021). Just as Sen (1999) proposes a paradigm shift, in terms of the understanding of development from valuing GDP/economic growth, towards a higher prioritization of human “well-being” and equalizing human capabilities, DisCrit, scholars propose a paradigm shift regarding the understanding of dis/ability and race. They encourage deconstructing and problematizing historical and existing power relations, specifically those that enact education mandates. DisCrit scholars essentially call for equalizing the unevenness between capabilities for chosen life functionings and agency of multiply-marginalized bodies, including those who are dis/abled and raced against the global and local ‘norms,’ with those of dominant groups. The CDCA combines these aspects of the CA and DisCrit and also explicitly addresses how the violence of colonialism caused (and still causes) “otherring,” specifically disablement (Grech, 2015a).

I chose to conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (United Nations, 2015) and its related policy documents, via a Critical Discourse Problematization Framework (CDPHF) (Van Aswegen et al., 2019) while employing a CDCA lens. Van Aswegan et al.’s (2019) CDPF is a methodologically innovative heuristic toolkit through which to analyze dis/ability related policy and influence dis/ability policy development and activism. It can also be usefully applied to other social policy fields, such as education and welfare. CDPF is a cross-fertilization of Hyatt’s (2013) critical higher educaiton policy discourse analysis (CHEPDA) and Bacchi’s (2009) what’s the problem presented to be (WPR) approach and, therefore, combines the dual goals of policy analysis and critique. The method is post-structural and interpretivist in nature and simultaneously uses a Critical Discourse Analysis and a policy problematization approach. As Van Aswegen et al. (2015, p. 186) claim, “while a policy problematization approach allows the analyst to identify and problematize policy constructions, discourse analysis adds other social, cultural and cognitive dimensions. Likewise, CDA on its own does not address policy problematization. But together, the combined approach offers a comprehensive, symbiotic framework to undertake the critical analysis of policy.” The authors draw from Ball (1993) in that they conceptualize policy as a discursive practice invested with social, historical, and temporal processes and power structures, requiring situatedness and focus on context.

Regarding my process, I initially read through the SDGs in their entirety, SDG4 specifically, and through related United Nation’s documents. I engaged in a search for problematizations, warrants (Hyatt, 2013) and answers to Bacchi’s (2009) six questions that frame the WPR, specifically referencing DisCrit tenents and aspects of the CA (Sen 1999). I viewed silence as discourse, and I attended to genealogies and binaries to contextualize the documents, remembering that policy does not stand alone. My finding indicate there is a significant need to deconstruct SDG4 and reorient it with explicitly decolonial, intersectional, and contextual policy language. There must be a re-problematization of the goal emphasizing human freedoms, well-being, and agency (and resisting neoliberal capitalist discourse) and acknowledging that colonialism is largely responsible for educational exclusion. I am still in the process of formal analysis, but I am hopeful that reorienting SDG4 with CDCA may lead to more inclusive and decolonial translation onto the ground.

Author

• Treasa Praino, Syracuse University