A critical discourse analysis of Curriculum for Excellence implementation in four Scottish secondary school case studies
Open accessAbstract
Improving the health and wellbeing (HWB) of children and young people has become a policy priority due to perceptions of decreased mental health and academic outcomes. This interest is seen in the Scottish education policy, Curriculum for Excellence (CfE); however, ambiguity around the term ‘wellbeing’ may hinder successful curriculum enactment. Drawing on Foucauldian theories, a critical discourse analysis was conducted on four secondary school case studies to analyse how discursive constructions of HWB were recontextualised at the local level. Analysis found that schools primarily conceptualised HWB as either teaching for achievement of predefined learning outcomes or teaching as a process for character development, and these competing curricular aims may constrain teachers’ pedagogic autonomy and impede the more aspirational tenets of CfE policy. The findings point to the need for further clarification of CfE policy aims to better support implementation.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The higher proportion of therapeutic provision may be partially explained by a move towards wellbeing and therapeutic approaches in Scotland and elsewhere in recent years.
“This may be partially explained by a move towards wellbeing and therapeutic approaches in Scotland and elsewhere in recent years, as indicated by the wellbeing focus of GIRFEC (Getting it right for every child; Hardley et al., 2021;Power & Taylor, 2020;Scottish Government, 2022b)”
From 'Alternative' education provision: a mapping and critique (2024) · cites this paper as Hardley et al., 2021
The indexed article abstract (no page given) says improving children’s health and wellbeing has become a policy priority and identifies that interest in Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence. It does not address therapeutic provision, a shift toward therapeutic approaches elsewhere, or GIRFEC’s wellbeing focus, so it supports only the Scottish wellbeing-policy part of the attributed claim. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
The challenge of defining wellbeing
Dodge, R., Daly, A., Huyton, J., & Sanders, L. (2012) · International Journal of Wellbeing · doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i3.4 · Cited by 2,166 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
'Alternative' education provision: a mapping and critique
Taylor, A., & McCluskey, G. (2024) · Oxford Review of Education · doi:10.1080/03054985.2024.2373067 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“…and therapeutic approaches in Scotland and elsewhere in recent years, as indicated by the well-being focus of GIRFEC (Getting it right for every child; Hardley et al., 2021; Power & Taylor, 2020; Scottish Government, 2022b), but may also indicate differences in how we categorised providers.”
- Authors
- Hardley, S., Gray, S., & McQuillan, R.
- Affiliations
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Hardley, Stephanie
- Venue
- Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2020-01-23
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 513-527
- ISSN
- 0159-6306 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-3739
- OpenAlex
- W3001803167
- Cited by
- 13
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 2 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 2.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Discourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (publishedVersion)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies
- Social Sciences › Education › Education Pedagogy and Practices
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Speech and Hearing › School Health and Nursing Education
- Keywords
- Curriculum for Excellence, education policy implementation, student well-being, health and well-being, secondary schools, Scottish education policy, Foucauldian discourse, character development, learning outcomes, policy ambiguity
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
