期刊名称：International Journal of Progressive Education
印刷版ISSN：1554-5210
出版年度：2007
卷号：03
期号：02
出版社：International Association of Educators
摘要：This paper examines the media and political landscapes within which ¡°whole
language¡± is currently constituted in Australia. Through surveying the themes and
rhetoric deployed in media texts over recent years, we consider how ¡°whole
language¡± has been taken up as part of a wider media campaign around education
generally. We consider how this campaign has been instrumental in constructing a
moral panic around literacy education in particular. We begin with an overview of
how the literacy standards of Australia's young people compare on international
measures with young people elsewhere. We consider how the media has bundled
these with populist concerns about literacy pedagogy and other educational issues to
create a sense of national crisis about education. We argue that the sociological
concept of "moral panic" provides a useful and systematic theoretical framework for
reading these discursive tactics of the media. Finally, we examine how a National
Inquiry into literacy responded to this panic by reinscribing a familiar ¨C and unhelpful
- binary between ¡°whole language¡± and phonics-based instruction. In the title and in
the body of the paper we keep ¡°whole language¡± in quotation marks to remind the
readers that use of the term in the media texts that are analysed differs widely from its
usage by literacy specialists.
