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Definitions of the ‘Subject’: The relations between the discourses of educational assessment and the psychology of motivation and their constructions of personal reality
Author(s) -
TUNSTALL PAT
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1080/01411920301845
Subject(s) - subject (documents) , epistemology , ideology , educational psychology , dialectic , sociology , metaphor , attribution , discourse analysis , psychology , emancipation , discursive psychology , social psychology , pedagogy , politics , linguistics , philosophy , library science , computer science , political science , law
Abstract This article engages critically in a study of two areas of academic discourse, educational assessment and the psychology of motivation, in order to examine the dialectical relationships between their modes of classification, ordering and defining, and the construction of personal realities. Its approach draws on post‐structuralist thinking associated with critical discourse analysis and Foucault's genealogical method. The first section raises questions about the use of metaphor and its function; the second provides ‘readings’ of three research texts on children's attributions for their different ideological assumptions; the third brings together issues about the ‘subject’ and ‘emancipation’. The text raises questions about educational assessment's positioning within a paradigm associated with the social construction of knowledge.