Marketing teacher quality: critical discourse analysis of OECD documents on effective teaching and TALIS

This study uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) texts on teacher quality and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) framework. Specifically, it explores the forewords of documents written by OECD leaders, which we believe are charged with meanings related to the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) discourse. We suggest that CDA of the texts sheds light on the manner in which OECD leaders attempt to gain normative control in the teacher quality discourse. Based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework for studying discourse, our analysis shows that the OECD (a) uses a discourse of fear to market teacher quality in light of global changes, implicitly framing teachers as ‘bad teachers’; (b) advocates reliance on the organization as a protector and (c) promises a remedy by regulating teachers in the name of effectiveness and the knowledge economy. The study offers a nuanced insight into OECD efforts to promote normative control in the teacher quality discourse, using three dimensions of discourse (i.e. the textual micro linguistic dimension, the meso-interdiscursive dimension, and the macro sociocultural dimension) that help gain ideational powers.