Discourse Analysis in Education – Article Analysis Assignment (AAA)

Overview
This assignment asks you to draw on the traditions and concepts you read about in the course in order
to analyze research articles furnished either by you or by your instructor. You will complete this
assignment twice: for 10/02 and 10/16.

Purpose
One of the ways you may engage with discourse analysis, beyond our class, is as a consumer of
research: you will read and evaluate other studies (as a reviewer, or for use in your own research).
Apart from their relevance to your own work, there are two ways you can evaluate other discourse
analytic studies:
1. How (well) does the research theorize its discursive object of study? (For example, if the study
claims that “Research remains to be done on whole-class discussions in Social Studies” how
does it define the object in italics? How does it turn data into evidence?)
2. How (well) does the research describe and justify its methodological approach? (For
example, what tradition(s) does it name and/or apply, and why are they relevant to the study?)

Procedure
• In this assignment, you will read a research article and write a response that evaluates the
article by drawing on the course readings.
• Your evaluation may apply to one of the articles furnished by your instructor, or to
one that you have chosen (with permission from your instructor).
• Your evaluation should follow these guidelines:
o 1-3 pages, 12 pt. Times New Roman, Double-spaced, 1” margins
o APA 6th edition citation of the article (author, date, title, source, etc.)
o Written for an informed, generalist, academic audience (e.g., your classmates and
instructor)
• In your evaluation, please:
o Summarize in a few sentences the research article’s “problem for study” (this is
usually found in the first major section after the abstract; it is often preceded by words
like “However,” “Yet,” or “Despite,” and includes phrases like “Few studies have…,”
“Opportunities remain to…,” or “Research remains to be done on….”).
o Evaluate the research article’s theorization in discourse analytic terms of its “object
of study”--the X in the phrase “Research remains to be done on X” (Note that this
theorizing is usually found in a section called “Theoretical Framework,” or a similar
heading, found between the “Literature Review” and the “Methodology” sections):
§ How (well) does the article conceptualize or define its object of study using
discourse analytic concepts?
§ How (well) does the article operationalize or apply those concepts to turning
discourse data into evidence?
o Evaluate the research article’s methodological approach to analyzing discourse data:
§ How (well) does the article describe its data selection and analysis?
§ How (well) does the article justify its approach (i.e., why these data? why
analyze them this way? drawing on which traditions, and why?)

Grading
Article Analysis Assignment: 10% X 2 = 20% of final grade
Checklist:
þSummary of research problem;
þEvaluation of Discourse Analytic theorization;
þEvaluation of Discourse Analytic methods
Rubric
Criteria/Grade 4 3 2 1 0
Complete Includes Includes Includes Includes Does not
summary of the summary of the summary of summary of include
research problem, research problem, the research the research summary of
as well as as well as problem, as problem the research
evaluation of the evaluation of the well as without problem or
theoretical theoretical evaluation of evaluation of evaluation of
framework and framework and the theoretical the theoretical the theoretical
methodology methodology framework or framework or framework and
methodology methodology methodology
Theoretical Uses the readings Uses the readings Uses the Uses the Does not use
to evaluate the to analyze the readings to readings to the readings to
conceptualization conceptualization identify the identify the identify the
and or article’s article’s article’s
operationalization operationalization discourse discourse discourse
of the article’s of the article’s concepts and concepts or concepts and
discourse discourse their their their
concepts concepts application application application
Methodological Uses the readings Uses the readings Uses the Uses the Does not use
to evaluate the to analyze the readings to readings to the readings to
description and description and identify the identify the identify the
justification of the justification of the article’s article’s article’s
article’s discourse article’s discourse discourse discourse discourse
methodology methodology analytic analytic analytic
traditions and traditions or traditions or
methods methods methods