To decipher texts in order to understand policies: theoretical methodological support for document analysis

Abstract

This article discusses some theoretical concepts used by our research group to develop a method to analyze documents related to Educational Policy based on concepts, contents and discourses found in documents. The texts are only a starting point; we do not aim to conduct a pure discourse analysis, but our goal is to understand the policies through document analysis. We consider the discursive hegemony, the colonization of vocabulary of reform, the bricolage of concepts that seek to develop new lenses to interpret texts of the educational reform; to read what they say, but also to capture what they do not say. We understand texts as products and producers of political orientations. The meanings are not given in documents, they are produced by readers, they are found beyond the words that compose them. For this reason, we focus upon the preliminary versions of documents, complementary texts and the context in which official texts were produced, thus articulating macro and micro levels of analysis. In this approach, a document is not restricted to a single and harmonious reading. It is subject to multiple readings, it is not an object of passive consumption, but an object to be investigated by researchers in order to produce meaning.