Book wins AESA 2004 Critics Choice Award

Maggie MacLure’s recent book Discourse in Educational and Social Research, published by Open University Press, has won the 2004 Critics' Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association (AESA). This prestigious award recognizes 'recent scholarship deemed to be outstanding in its field'.

The award confirms the book's international reputation as essential reading for research students and faculty in education and the social sciences. (It is already required reading on many research methods courses in universities in the US and Australia, as well as in the UK). Written in a witty and engaging style, Discourse in Educational and Social Research is both practical and provocative. It demonstrates the insights and challenges of a discourse-based orientation to research, and argues the case for 'discursive literacy' as an important research skill.

The chapters provide critical readings of a variety of educational and social science 'texts' - including press articles, life history interviews, parent-teacher consultations and policy debates - to show how knowledge, power, identities, opportunities and realities are fabricated in discourse. The book also deals with research itself as discursive practice. It examines the texts that qualitative researchers produce and consume, such as reports, monographs, transcripts, journal articles, with the aim of helping researchers develop a critical awareness of their own role as readers and writers of texts.