This article describes a longitudinal ethnographic research project in a Grade 1 classroom enrolling L2 learners and Anglophones. Using a community-of-practice perspective rarely applied in L2 research, the author examines three classroom practices that she argues contribute to the construction of L2 learners as individuals and as such reinforce traditional second language acquisition perspectives. More importantly, they serve to differentiate participants from one another and contribute to community stratification. In a stratified community in which the terms of stratification become increasingly visible to all, some students become defined as deficient and are thus systematically excluded from just those practices in which they might otherwise appropriate identities and practices of growing competence and expertise.
There has tended to be an overemphasis on the teaching and analysis of the mode of writing in ‘academic literacies’ studies, even though changes in the communica- tion landscape have engendered an increasing recognition of the different semiotic dimensions of representation. This paper tackles the logocentrism of academic lit- eracies and argues for an approach which recognises the interconnection between different modes, in other words, a ‘multimodal’ approach to pedagogy and to theoris- ing communication. It explores multimodal ways of addressing unequal discourse resources within the university with its economically and culturally diverse student body. Utilising a range of modes is a way of harnessing the resources that the students bring with them. However, this paper does not posit multimodality as an alternative way of inducting students into academic writing practices. Rather, it explores what happens when different kinds of ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1991) encounter a range of generic forms, modes and ways of presenting information. It examines how certain functions are distributed across modes in students’ texts in a first year engineering course in a South African university (specifically scientific discourse and student affect) and begins to problematise the visual/verbal distinction.
Textuality is often thought of in linguistic terms; for instance, the talk and writing that circulate in the classroom. In this paper I take a multimodal perspective on textuality and context. I draw on illustrative examples from school Science and English to examine how image, colour, gesture, gaze, posture and movement—as well as writing and speech—are mobilized and orchestrated by teachers and students, and how this shapes learning contexts. Throughout the paper I discuss the issues raised by a multimodal perspective for the conceptualization of text and learning context, and how this approach can contribute to learning and pedagogy more generally. I suggest that attending to the full ensemble of communicative modes involved in learning contexts enables a richer view of the complex ways in which curriculum knowledge (and policy) is mediated and articulated through classroom practices.
This paper analyses the contribution of student agency and teacher contingency in the construction of classroom discourse in adult English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classes for refugees and asylum seekers, for whom the identity of student itself can constitute a stable point in a highly unstable and potentially threatening lifeworld. In contrast to accepted ideas of the prevalence of teacher-initiated initiation–response–feedback (IRF) sequences in whole group teacher-fronted activity, characteristic student- initiated moves for bringing the outside into classroom discourse are identified. These are discussed in terms of the student agency and teacher contingency involved, drawing on the Bakhtinian notion of “answerability.”: teacher and students are robustly claiming interactive space in classroom talk, bringing the outside into discussion. This data, drawn from narrative and classroom data in case studies of Adult ESOL classrooms, points to less docile more agentive and open-ended models of classroom discourse than have typically been evidenced in the literature.
Just over 10 years ago, Educational Review published an article “Reconceiving argument” by Richard Andrews. In the article, Andrews traced some of the changes in the conception of argument that had taken place within educational contexts (primarily within the UK) over the previous few years. An important aim of the authors’ article is to consider whether there is any evidence that the (re)conceptualization of argument discussed in Andrews’ article has permeated educational theory and practice in the last 10 years. Specifically they will consider his invocation of new metaphors to conceive of the argumentation process as more akin to a dialogic exchange in contrast to adversarial combat. They question whether such a framing diminishes the value of conflict and confrontation in the argumentation process.
This paper considers current assessment practice, looks at the impact of the Internet on today’s learners, explores ways of modernising assessment to narrow the gap between the everyday lives of students and the assessment practices that we impose on them.
This article explores the role that Web 2.0 technologies can play in enhancing languagelearning development in a blended world. It will argue that technologies are not enough ontheir own to make a difference, but that teachers bring a particular understanding of languageand the needs of their learners to the creation of suitable activities. It will show that the use oftechnologies is also changing our understanding of the profession of language education andthat sociocultural theory can help us understand why this is occurring. Blended learning as atype of classroom activity will be explored showing how different definitions may beinterpreted in the classroom context. The types of blended activities that can be used areillustrated through three vignettes.
A by-product of new social media platforms is an abundant textual record of engagements - billions of words across the world-wide-web in, for example, discussion forums, blogs and wiki discussion tabs. Many of these engagements consist of commentary on a particular text and can thus be regarded as supplements to these texts. The larger purpose of this article is to flag the utility value of this electronic supplementarity for critical reading by highlighting how it can reveal particular meanings that the text being responded to can reasonably be said to marginalise and / or repress. Given the potentially very large size of social media textual product, knowing how to explore these supplements with electronic text analysis software is essential.
To illustrate the above, I focus on how the content of online discussion forums, explored through electronic text analysis software, can be used to assist critical reading of the texts which initiate them. The paper takes its theoretical orientations from the textual intervention work of Rob Pope together with themes in the work of the philosopher, Jacques Derrida.
This essay argues for a paradigm shift in what counts as learning and literacy education for youth. Two related constructs are emphasized: collective Third Space and sociocritical literacy. The construct of a collective Third Space builds on an existing body of research and can be viewed as a particular kind of zone of proximal development. The perspective taken here challenges some current definitions of the zone of proximal development. A sociocritical literacy historicizes everyday and institutional literacy practices and texts and reframes them as powerful tools oriented toward critical social thought. The theoretical constructs described in this article derive from an empirical case study of the Migrant Student Leadership Institute (MSLI) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Within the learning ecology of the MSLI, a collective Third Space is interactional^ constituted, in which traditional conceptions of academic literacy and
instruction for students from nondominant communities are contested and replaced with forms of literacy that privilege and are contingent upon students' sociohistorical lives, both proximally and distally. Within the MSLI, hybrid language practices; the conscious use of social theory, play, and imagination; and historicizing literacy practices link the past, the present, and an imagined future.
Those familiar with Pennycook’s previous works such as English and the Discourses of Colonialism (1998) or Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction (2001) will not be surprised to learn that this latest volume, co-edited with Makoni and titled Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages, challenges many orthodoxies related to the role of English in the world and the nature of language. As far back as his 1994 book, The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language, Pennycook has been contesting the view that the global spread of English has been a natural, neutral, and beneficial process and has argued against fixation on language as an a priori ontological system in favor of focus on “language use as a social, cultural, and political act” (Pennycook, 1994, p. 29). It is not difficult to imagine that the editors’ collaboration on this volume was inspired in part by a critique Makoni offered of Pennycook’s Critical Applied Linguistics suggesting that in the absence of concrete strategies for engaging and collaborating with local communities, “Critical Applied Linguistics runs the danger of being hegemonic to the very communities it seeks to serve” (Makoni, 2003, p. 135). Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages is also a natural extension of Makoni’s plenary contribution at the 2004 American Association of Applied Linguistics conference in Portland where he proposed a vision of applied linguistics grounded less in an Anglo-American or Western world view, but having greater relevance to a variety of sociolinguistic contexts (Makoni, 2005). Following a forward by Ofelia García, the book is divided into 10 chapters covering the following three areas: the socio-political contexts from which current understandings of language have grown, the way current conceptions of language have limited development of a more nuanced understanding of how people communicate, and the pedagogical implications a language disinvention and reconstitution process might have.
Genre-based approaches to teaching reading and writing have been widely adopted in Australia and other western education systems, and have achieved spectacular improvements in student outcomes, from twice to more than four times expected rates of learning (Culican 2005, Rose & Acevedo 2006). The development of these pedagogies in Australia has been fuelled by a rapid growth in the proportion of students from non- English speaking backgrounds who require academic skills. Similarly, economic changes impacting on educational demands in China are now sparking interest in innovative approaches to English literacy, particularly in English for Academic Purposes. However, introducing a genre-based literacy pedagogy in English language programs presents a number of challenges, given the variations in education histories and current practices in China and the west. These challenges can be divided along two lines, firstly what it is that EAP students need to learn, including knowledge about language and skills in using this knowledge, and secondly how they can most effectively learn this knowledge and skills, and how to teach them. In this paper we will first examine the ‘what’ of literacy learning, in terms of the genre-based model of language and the skills that English language learners require, and second the ‘how’ of literacy teaching, by reviewing the role of dialogue in the genre-based language in education work of the Sydney School (Martin 2000/2006, Martin & Rose 2005).
We describe a collaborative project in which university researchers, teachers and Grade 4–5 English language learners (ELLs) investigated the sociohistorical contexts and practices in which the ELLs participate, through a ‘community scan’. Many observers have argued that schools and teachers have such minimal knowledge of the outside- school lives of their multilingual and multicultural students that they are unable to build upon the ‘funds of knowledge’ that students and other members of their communities have. In particular, a large body of recent literature argues that school literacy education should be linked to literacies that children develop in their homes and communities. We present here a study centred on a public school located in a Canadian Punjabi-Sikh community. For our scan we collected census and other demographic representations of the community, as well as media reports and academic literature concerned with Punjabi-Sikh immigration. In addition, our scan included interviews with teachers, principals, parents and community leaders. Students’ investigations and representations of the community and of out-of-school multiliteracies were also collected. The authors argue that such information is crucial in the development of pedagogy that values and promotes the reworking of the practices, images, texts and symbols that children already use.