Metaphors of hierarchy in mathematics education discourse: the narrow path

This paper adopts a rhetorical perspective in order to examine language about children in the discourse of mathematics education through a study of metaphor. Previous research has tended to emphasize the notion of ‘beliefs’, which locates responsibility for problematic conceptions of children within the heads of individuals, particularly practising and preservice teachers. Using the notion of metaphor, this paper examines several texts in US mathematics education, including conversations in an elementary classroom, a university mathematics methods classroom, mathematics textbooks, and standards documents. All of these texts draw on the metaphor of children’s learning as travel along a physical path, which supports talking and thinking about children in hierarchical ways. The dominance of this metaphor presents a new challenge for teacher educators concerned with equity: that of examining their own language and practices for hierarchical language.     

Reflection and professional identity in teachers’ future-oriented discourse

Educational researchers have recently suggested that Schön's influential model of the ‘reflective practitioner’ lacks a prospective, or future, dimension. In this study, we examine instances of future-oriented talk produced by novice English as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers during mentoring meetings in one North American university setting. Context-specific functions of future-oriented discourse (e.g., planning, prediction) are investigated in relation to reflective thinking and teacher identity. We illustrate how teacher mentoring meetings represent discursive spaces in which novice teachers have an opportunity to verbalize plans, predict outcomes, consider possibilities, and reflect on their evolving pedagogical practices. We argue that teacher mentors should become aware of these important functions, and encourage prospective reflection in novice teachers.     

Referencing and identity,voice and agency: adult learners' transformations within literacy practices

Referencing skills contribute much to the emergence of voice in students' academic writing. Such skills have a bearing on the identity of learners as writers. In referring certain ideas to certain sources, the writer is able to distinguish voices of others and, in doing so, provide space for the hearing, or establishment, of their individual voice. However, an understanding of the rationale behind referencing and taking on the techniques required for its conventions often proves a complex, intimidating affair for students. Much fear is incited within learners by the convention of referencing, together with the scourge of plagiarism. Thus, rather than learners being ensconced within the academic environment through being able to relate to and engage with other voices, thereby acquiring agency in their writing, issues around referencing can actually serve to alienate them from the academic environment and deter them from their own agency. It may involve much practice and discussion before students see referencing as an asset in their writing. This process entails deconstructions, renegotiations and reconstructions of relationships with ideas and identities. This paper focuses on the relationship of agency and the issue of referencing in the development of an authorial identity for adult learners in the academic institution.     

试析新闻语篇中的概念隐喻

本文首先从认知的角度出发,对概念隐喻进行了阐释;然后运用实例解析了三种典型的概念隐喻,即战争隐喻,上下隐喻,容器隐喻是如何在新闻语篇中运作的。通过分析,人们能进而确信:隐喻作为一种认知现象,对人类思维方式、语言使用等方面的影响是极其广泛而深刻的。     

Korean-American student perceptions on literacy and identity: perspectives from an ethnographic case study

This ethnographic case study examines perceptions of literacy and identity for a Korean-American student in a third-grade classroom. The researchers examine how teachers can misinterpret Asian identity in the classroom due to perceptions related to the Model Minority Myth and other stereotypical representations of Asian culture. By focusing solely on academic success, teachers miss opportunities to gain insight for nurturing other areas of student success and adjustment in the classroom environment. Implications for identity formation and authentic integration of language and literacy practices are discussed. Educators interested in culturally-relevant instruction for immigrant students should find this study informative.     

A systematic form of Japanization in Okinawa: Japanese identity construction through a Japanization discourse in textbooks and a textbook guide

This research examines some modes of Japanization through education in Okinawa where Japanese influences on education have permeated after Japan’s annexation. I investigate how a book excerpt entitled Mizu no Tōzai, included in high school textbooks in Okinawa, constructs Japanese identity. Mizu no Tōzai functions as nihonjinron discourse, which is characterized by ‘Japanese culture,’ ‘Japanese uniqueness,’ and ‘Japaneseness.’ The ‘East-West’ dichotomy, depicted in this nihonjinron discourse, induces students to choose ‘Japan’/‘Japanese culture’ and become ‘Japanese.’ Practice sections of Mizu no Tōzai in textbooks as well as a textbook guide operate to be complicit in this Japanese identity construction. Through a critical analysis of discourse, I reveal that the nihonjinron discourse operating as official knowledge, in collusion with the other discursive texts, produces a position subjected to the discourse of Japanization within which Okinawans become ‘Japanese.’ I problematize these discursive texts as a systematic form of Japanizing Okinawans’ minds through education.     

Opening the box: literacy,artefacts and identity

This article discusses research which was carried out within the ESRC‐funded Home–School Knowledge Exchange Project (2001–2004). Through a process of collaborative action research an activity based on previous project work was devised. Children were asked to select artifacts from home that would inspile their creative writing in school. This activity explicitly allowed children to present aspects of their identity within the school domain and for knowledge of home practices to permeate the literacy curriculum. The research explored the constraints that the contemporary literacy curriculum imposed on the activity, in particular the problematic status of oracy. The gains that the activity afforded some children, both curriculum‐based (extended pieces of work, improved structure to writing) and personal (increased motivation, heightened self‐esteem), are also examined. The research highlighted the relationship between literacy and identity in that the activity allowed the expression of both figurative and positional identity. Additionally the importance of popular culture in the formation of individual and group identity is discussed.     

Schoolchildren,governmentality and national e-safety policy discourse

The introduction of widespread school Internet access in industrialised countries has been accompanied by the materialisation of what can be labelled as a national school e-safety agenda. Drawing upon Foucault's notions of discourse and governmentality, this paper explores how e-safety policy documents serve to constrain the conceptual environment, seeking to determine and limit individuals' thoughts on this matter. Analysing UK and US government texts, it is argued that four main themes arise that subvert critical, informed debate about children online. Namely, the discursive construction of e-kids, the muting of schoolchildren's voices, the responsibilisation of students and ‘diagnostic inflation’ through realist risk discourses. These issues can be interpreted as an attempt to engender control through particular strategies of governmentality. While recognising that students may resist such attempts at control, it is concluded that the issue of children's digital rights need to be more prominent in e-safety policies.     

A critical discourse analysis of Gisela's family story: a construal of deportation,illegal immigrants,and literacy

In this paper, I use critical discourse analysis to analyze a student's narrative about the arrest, incarceration, and deportation of her mother to Mexico. The student, Gisela, was a fifth grader in my classroom during the 2008/2009 school year, and I encouraged the students to collect family stories from their relatives. Gisela created this story, and she wrote and illustrated this with the help of her father, student peers, and me. I draw on Gloria Anzaldúa's constructs of nepantla and nepantlera, narrative analysis, and systemic functional linguistics to show how Gisela's construed this story to create a powerful and creative narrative that disrupted autonomous forms of literacy along with the excluding and damaging discourses circulating about immigrants in our community.     

Teacher identity,teaching vision,and Chinese language education for South Asian students in Hong Kong

There is a growing interest in research on language teacher identity as relevant research suggests that language teacher self-identification has an impact on their language teaching. The present paper explores the self-identification and subsequent effects on their actual teaching vision and practice of 16 Chinese language subject teachers teaching Chinese as a second language to South Asians in Hong Kong. Data collected from classroom observations and interviews with the teachers demonstrate that Chinese language subject teachers negotiate with South Asian learners and construct their teaching in ways that enable them to create an environment where they see themselves as linguistic torchbearers and cultural transmitters while acquiring a strong feeling of success professionally. This research implies that teacher identity is a kind of pedagogy through which language teachers can reproduce or counteract hegemonic discourses and ideologies that oppress South Asians as non-native language minorities.     

广告语篇中语篇模式探讨

语篇的形式与内容结构都是为一定的语篇类型服务的。而语篇类型实现语篇目的、体现语篇功能。文章通过实例,从语篇分析角度对广告语篇中几种组篇模式进行了探讨,认为广告中语篇模式的采用与广告所要实现的语篇功能是紧密相关的。广告作者会在广告中综合运用各种模式。在总体结构中嵌入其他的模式。     

From learner to teacher: practice,language, and identity in a teaching practicum

This paper reports on a qualitative study that investigated the lived experiences of a group of pre-service English language teachers during a teaching practicum in Hong Kong. Multiple, in-depth interviews with student teachers were conducted during a 6-week practicum to understand the students’ experiences of becoming teachers. A contribution of this study is to use the analytic lens of teacher identity to understand the challenges, one group of pre-service teachers confronted as they positioned themselves, and were positioned by others, as particular types of teachers during their practicum. The results of this study suggest that a critical perspective, grounded in an identity-theoretic understanding of pre-service teachers’ practicum experiences, is needed to reveal and then overcome antagonistic relations that might threaten the identity work of trainee teachers. Endorsing calls to rethink the practicum, the types of support that might be offered to pre-service teachers are critically examined and suggestions for the ways in which stakeholders, such as teacher educators and school-based supporting teachers, can best facilitate the identity work of pre-service teachers undertaking a teaching practicum are offered. Implications for future research are also discussed.     

Education and nationalism: the discourse of education policy in Scotland

The paper draws on critical discourse analysis to examine and discuss some of the key developments in the governing of education in Scotland since the election of the Scottish National Party (SNP) government in May 2007. It analyses these developments, drawing on a study of key policy texts and suggests that discourse analysis has much to contribute to the understanding of the governing strategy of the minority SNP administration as reflected in its education policy. We suggest that there is a self-conscious strategy of ‘crafting the narrative’ of government that seeks to discursively re-position ‘smarter Scotland’ alongside small, social democratic states within the wider context of transnational pressures for conformity with global policy agendas. Thus the paper connects to current debates on the relationship between an emergent global education policy ‘field’ and the capacity of ‘local’ contexts to develop and sustain particular, embedded assumptions and practices.     

Distinction,integration and identity: Motivations for local language literacy in Senegalese communities

Successful adult literacy and basic education programs are notoriously difficult to achieve. One reason for this has to do with how the question, “literacy for what?” is answered for a given program. All too frequently, the answer to that question is shaped more by the goals of the literacy provider than it is by learners’ own goals and desires.     

Academic identity and autonomy in a changing policy environment

The article draws on two research projects to explore the implications of policy change in the UK for academic identities within a predominantly communitarian theoretical perspective. It focuses on biological scientists and science policies. It examines the impacts of changes upon the dynamic between individuals, disciplines and universities within which academic identities are formed and sustained and upon individual and collective values central to academic identity, namely the primacy of the discipline in academic working lives and academic autonomy. Challenges to these have been strong but they have retained much of their normative power, even if the meaning of academic autonomy has changed. Communitarian theories of academic identity may need to be modified in the contemporary environment but they do not need to be abandoned.     

Contorting identities: figuring literacy and identity in adolescent worlds

This paper explores connections and disconnects between identity and literacy for a group of adolescents in a second level classroom setting. We build on Mead and Vygotsky’s conceptualisations of identity formation as an intricate emergent happening constantly formed/reformed by people, in their interactions with others [Mead, G. H. 1999. Play, School, Society. Edited by M. J. Deegan. Oxford: Peter Lang; Vygotsky, L. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press]. This paper will set to explore the impact of this on adolescent literacy practice, student choice and agency [Lewis, C., P. Ensico, and E. M. Moje. 2007. “Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power.” The Electronic Journal of English as a Second Language 12 (3): 1–205]. The concept of figured worlds plays a fundamental role in our theorisation of adolescent literacy and identity. Literacy and identity remain interwoven in very complex ways for adolescents as they attempt to make sense and meaning from in and out of school experiences [Burnett, C., J. Davies, G. Merchant, and J. Rowsell. 2014. New Literacies Around the Globe: Policy and Pedagogy. New York, NY: Routledge; Davies, J. 2013. “(I’m)Material Girls Living in (in)Material Worlds: Identity Curation Through Time and Space.” Presentation at UKLA Conference, Liverpool]. A combination of quantitative and qualitative research was used in carrying out this exploration with a thematic approach to data analysis. The findings of the exploration identify that there is a disconnect between identity in and out of school. We then see the struggle students have in coming to terms with their various figured worlds, and varying identities in given scenarios. There is an emphasis on the dated nature of some prescribed texts for study on the English course and the need for a review of these to bridge the scholastic and social divide evident from the findings. This paper explores the literacy and identity experiences of one group of adolescents alongside their opinions about the English literacy curriculum.     

语音隐喻探析

语音隐喻这一术语是由国外学者Fónagy 于1999 年提出, 李弘教授继而从认知语言学的跨域映射的角度进行了全面地论述。本文结合隐喻思维的有关论述, 探讨了语音隐喻的认知机制, 对英汉语言中的语音隐喻进行了初步分类并浅析了英汉语言中语音隐喻体现出来的文化特点。     

Rationality and rationalisation in teacher education policy discourse in New Zealand

Background:?A newly elected centre-right coalition government in New Zealand was forced to deal with the cumulative fiscal consequences of two unforeseen challenges: a global financial crisis in September 2008 and two major seismic events in the country's second largest city in 2009 and 2010. This paper examines the way in which policies for initial and continuing teacher education were reshaped thereafter and the justifications provided by government for these changes.

Purpose:?The paper examines the plausibility of the government's contemporary ‘crisis’ discourse and aims to show how ‘rational’ education policy changes also carry broader ideological and political agendas for teacher education. Thus, current changes to teacher education policy are located in the historical context of trends over the last two decades.

Sources of Evidence:?The paper uses official statements by government and officials to show how they justified the policy changes as the only possible responses to an external economic crisis. Secondary sources of statistical economic data and policy texts are used to demonstrate that equally plausible alternative responses were overlooked, rejected or ignored.

Main argument:?The paper construes teacher education policy as both text and discourse. It is argued that the media statements of politicians and officials are intended to secure popular approval for public education austerity measures, while at the same time masking an underlying political and ideological project and ignoring the informed policy rebuttals of some educationists.

Conclusions:?The steps taken in New Zealand to respond to a short- to medium-term national fiscal crisis have major long-term consequences for teacher education. Most apparent is the continued failure to acknowledge the major incremental reductions in public subsidies for initial teacher education that have occurred year on year since the early 1990s and, instead, to reiterate the new public management ideology of further public service efficiencies.     

话语标记语在口语交际中的关联功能与语篇运用

本文以"话语标记语"为主题,探讨了其在口语交际中的语用功能。通过BEC口试语料分析,研究口语交际中话语标记语这一语言现象,探讨说话人是如何利用这种衔接的语言手段来减少听者处理话语的负担,以达到有效的沟通。     

Narrative and the exploration of culture in teachers’ discussions of literacy, identity, self, and other

The purpose of this study was to explore the role of teacher narratives in relation to culture, literacy, self, and other within a masters literacy course in a US context. Within the course, teachers read and responded to autobiographical fiction and nonfiction in book club discussions and by sharing spoken and written personal narratives. Whereas many previous studies of teacher narrative have focused primarily on the content of teacher narrative, this study sought to consider the forms, functions, content, and contexts surrounding the sharing of personal narratives. Two cases, explored through sociolinguistic analysis, are presented to demonstrate how course participants constructed narratives and how these narratives functioned within the course and in relation to participant learning.