Policy, practice, and representation: a critical discourse analysis of Victoria’s Easy English Inclusive Education policy

This article presents a critical discourse analysis of Victoria’s inclusive education policy regarding disability, examining its online multimodal Easy English version through Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach and Kress’s multimodal analysis. Despite decades of policy reform aimed at fostering inclusive education, a gap between policy rhetoric and practical implementation persists. We critically examine the visual and textual elements to investigate how language and multimodal representations in policy documents shape or consolidate understandings of disability and implementation of inclusion. The analysis reveals how institutional documents may reflect an underlying discourse of deficit or construct disempowering practices. This research contributes to ongoing scholarly debate about policy discourse in developing understandings of inclusive practices. The findings highlight the need to attend to discourse and representation within the complex interplay between policy language, institutional practices, and educational outcomes for students with disabilities in Victorian schools. This study emphasises the importance of addressing such issues for effective educational inclusion.