Educational discourse: concept «core high school subject"

The cross-disciplinary nature of the research in the field of educational discourse in the high school setting is defined by the fact that this type of institutional discourse intersects with the university discourse, since it contains features that characterize, for example, the scope of the transition from high school to college-level education, preparation for college and vocational training in the context of the Concept «CORE HIGH SCHOOL SUBJECT». Educational discourse also demonstrates characteristics of economic and financial discourse, for instance, when the participants discuss innovations in school management and its financial management. The discourse features of sociology become part of the educational discourse, for example, when participants talk about the career and life plans of high school graduates, aspects of socialization of young people, and the surveys of students in the light of the educational and professional development of the young adolescent groups. The author examines the features of the Concept «CORE HIGH SCHOOL SUBJECT» in the educational discourse in the American high school setting. The core of the concept are subjects or classes, which are required to take during the high school years in most states; that is, for three to four years of study. The Concept «CORE HIGH SCHOOL SUBJECT» within the framework of educational discourse, which is a form of institutional discourse, is a semantic entity with a complex structure, covering conceptual basis and extensive socio-cultural characteristics (associations, emotions, evaluations, national images and connotations inherent in American culture and education). The lexical and semantic features of educational discourse, the names of subjects or classes in the American high school and their descriptions reiterate in the texts, which have a high school theme. The texts also show recurrence of lexical and semantic discourse characteristics, which represent the discourse participants (stakeholders), their value systems and profiles. The features, which help to categorize components of the institutional discourse, are identified during the differentiation of core subjects based on both common and individual factors. The author contributes to the building of the descriptive model and taxonomy of this variety of educational discourse.