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Abstract:
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The 7-point grading scale – An analysis of information and discourse
The main objectives of this thesis are to investigate the degree of which Danish universities
have achieved to communicate and inform students about the 7-point grading scale, which was
implemented in the Danish higher educational system in September 2007. In addition, the
thesis will provide an analysis of the discourse existing within the target group towards the
grading scale based on an opinion poll carried out during 2008. The target group consists of
students enrolled at five of Denmark’s largest universities. An illustration of the target group’s
evaluation of the respective five universities’ informative skills is provided followed by a
theoretical analysis of two polarised universities’ information campaigns mainly using Preben
Sepstrups (1999) 6-step model. The two polarised universities refer to the universities whose
students’ evaluations of the information materials differ most from one another.
To define the discourse existing within the target group an opinion poll performed among
1,119 university students from five of Denmark’s largest universities was carried out.
Furthermore, two newspaper articles from the two polarised universities were analysed to
investigate what possible discourses the text theoretically might produce. The theoretical
framework of this analysis is provided by Norman Fairclough (1992) through the critical
discourse analysis. As a supplement to the discourse analysis a theoretical approach mainly
within the field of linguistic pragmatics has been used to analyse the textual part of the
research objective, which is used to analyse any hidden messages in the texts along with
determining the ir functions.
The articles published by the two polarised universities express opposite discourses, which is
believed to be sender-related; one sender is representing the view of the target group, a
student, whereas the other represents the view of the Danish government as it is written by an
employee from the respective university.
Furthermore, the analyses and research carried out have illustrated great differences in the
target group’s evaluations of the five universities’ informative skills, and it is evident that
some universities has solved this informational task more better than others. The differences
between the two polarised universities are, however, not mainly due to the content and form of
the information material. Instead the distributional differences between the two universities have been found to be the determining factor; one information material has been distributed
through e-mails thus contemplating an active approach, whereas the other information material
has been posted on the university’s website, hence expecting the target group to collect
information themselves. Secondly, the analysis has revealed that there exists a negative
outlook on the newly implemented 7-point grading scale within the target group thus a strong
anti-7-point grading scale discourse is present in the Danish university environment. This is,
however, not so much caused by the change of the grading scale. Rather it is due to the
specific type of grading scale the government has implemented, which is regarded non- flexible
and ambiguous in its translation of grades from the old scale to the new scale. |
