Discursive and Pedagogical (Counter)Imperatives in Textbook Tasks: A Critical Politico-Communicative Inquiry

By employing the discourse of suspicion and critical discourse analysis, textbook tasks were systematically subjected to a process of examination that problematized the text (micro), the discursive practice (meso), and the broader social context (macro).  Critical discourse analysis bears significant relevance when adopted as a theoretical and methodological bases in qualitative research considering its “multiplicity of analysis”, “plurality of approach”, and “multiplicity of conceptions” (Al Maghlouth 2017: 56, 57 & 69). 

Consistent with the value-commitment and transformative orientation of the critical tradition and drawing from (1) Mihailidis’ civic intentionality, (2) Langran and DeWitt’s critical place-based inquiry, and (3) McLaren, Crawford and Freire’s critical praxis, this study identified and mapped the discursive and pedagogical counter-imperatives that are embodied and interwoven in the media education textbook tasks.  This communication inquiry also went on to analyze these counter-discourses and counter-pedagogies’ mutually reinforcing contribution in actualizing the potential of media and information literacy as a socially situated practice of engaged scholarship, communication activism, and social justice education.

Through the discursive and pedagogical examination of the corpus of collated instructional materials, the researcher also sought to generate new and alternative perspectives in reimagining and redesigning media education textbook tasks that will deviate from the orthodox paradigms, processes, and practices.