4 - Using discourse analysis to inform content analysis: a pragmatic, mixed-methods approach to exploring how the headteacher role is articulated in job descriptions

Summary

Introduction

This chapter takes a step- by- step approach to providing guidance and a practical example of using discourse analysis to inform content analysis, in order to gain an understanding of messages being conveyed in an essentially qualitative data set. The focus of this chapter is the creative and methodologically innovative approach taken in combining critical discourse analysis with a detailed quantitative content analysis, to undertake an interpretative examination of headteacher job descriptions in Wales (Milton et al, 2023). We adopted this eclectic and pragmatic methodological approach in order to elucidate understandings of the articulations of professionalism (Evetts, 2009) being conveyed to prospective candidates in a large number of headteacher job descriptions (n = 67) at a very specific point within an ongoing and extensive education policy reform process in Wales (OECD, 2017). It was clear that these reforms were impacting headteacher recruitment, retention, and the lived experience of their roles and identities (Connolly et al, 2018; Davies et al, 2018), and, as such, headteacher job descriptions were useful linguistic artefacts where received accounts of the professional role could be examined.

Generally, critical discourse analysis and content analysis are derived from opposing methodological and epistemological traditions. The first of these being qualitative, offering deep and close analysis of meaning and significance (Hardy et al, 2004), and the other being quantitative, concerned with analysing the frequency with which particular units of data occur within text (Pole and Lampard, 2002). Bryman (1984, cited in Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004, p 15) points to a historical tendency to ‘treat epistemology and methodology as being synonymous’ in social research. Yet, many researchers have advocated that epistemology should guide, but not necessarily dictate, the methodological approach adopted and, that in certain instances, it may prove useful for researchers to adopt methods that fall outside the paradigm with which their discipline or area of study is historically associated (Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2010). This means that, whilst the particular epistemological position adopted by the researcher (or research team) should be clearly understood and acknowledged, this should not confine them methodologically (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004, p 15).