Literacy in Citizenship Preparatory Classes

Beliefs and theories about literacy, from traditional literacy to multiliteracies to critical literacy, contain assumptions and ideologies about what it means to be literate. In the realm of U.S. citizenship, naturalization requires a certain level of English literacy and knowledge of history/civics, ascertained by a standardized interview. This article investigates views and practices of literacy in the naturalization test and citizenship preparatory classes. Ethnographic observations of three such classes indicate that English literacy is taught as discrete, decontextual, and superficial, and accuracy is accentuated over fluency. Overlooked, but equally important to become a naturalized citizen, are de facto literacy practices such as participation in high-stakes institutional discourse. In concluding that neither citizenship classes nor the citizenship test promote critical literacy or citizenship, I end with suggestions for promoting a more active and critical citizenry.     

Constructing views of science tied to issues of equity and diversity: A study of beginning science teachers

In this study, we examined the discursive and social practices of a teacher educator (the first author) and her eight beginning science teachers in a course on the nature of science and issues of equity and diversity. We focused our investigation on beginning science teachers' views of science and science teaching, as well as the grounds they offered for their views. We organized our discussion of the nature of science, teacher learning, and grounds for views along three dimensions: personal, social, and political. We found that beginning teachers routinely drew from only one of these three dimensions to support their views of the nature of science and ways to represent science to all students. In our implications, we recommend that teacher educators encourage teacher learners to examine personal, social, and political grounds carefully and critically in the process of constructing or revising their views. We argue that attention to these three dimensions of grounds for views will assist beginning teachers in adopting nature of science positions that are broad and complex, that more clearly reflect the goals of equity and excellence, and thus, that hold greater promise for achieving a science education inclusive of all students. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 53–76, 2003     

Teachers' talk of experiencing: Conflict,resistance and agency

This article draws on the concept of experiencing to highlight a positive connection between resistance and agency, and its potential for teachers' professional development and educational change. The article examines teachers' discourse during a Change Laboratory intervention aimed at developing teaching practices. The intervention was initiated to deal with problems in the evaluation of students' learning. The article analyzes in particular the case of a teacher whose discourse shifted from critical and disruptive to constructive and agentive. The analysis explains this transition as a process of experiencing through which this teacher faced and worked out critical conflicts related to her teaching.     

Teacher‐Pupil Discourse in Classrooms for Hearing‐Impaired Children

Early studies of teacher‐pupil discourse in classrooms for the hearing‐impaired showed that it is systematic, teacher‐controlled and interlaced with language content. Discourse analysis, based on qualitative methods of study, augments and qualifies these views by providing a technique for examining multiple levels of interaction. Discourse material excerpted from a language lesson conducted by an experienced primary teacher with five hearing‐impaired pupils suggests that teacher‐pupil interaction is organized on several levels of structure. A hierarchy of lesson interaction is demonstrated through the illustrative discourse samples; hierarchical levels of roles, tasks, phrases, topics, sequences, turns, and utterances are identified and discussed. Educational implications about the learning structure of the classroom for the hearing‐impaired are offered.     

Resisting magic waves: ideologies of “English language teaching” in Iranian newspaper advertisements

Discourse practices play crucial roles in shaping the cultural environment of social events and, therefore, influence how they actually take place. Promotional materials and media advertisements are significant instances of such discourses through which understandings of social practices, including language education, are both reflected and shaped. In this study, I explore the advertisements of Iranian private language teaching institutes appearing in Hamshahri newspaper to uncover ideologies behind them and to examine the subtleties of how the advertisements represent and at the same time reproduce the ideological assumptions regarding “English language teaching” in Iran. A contextual investigation of ideological presuppositions underlying the discourse of these advertisements reveals that they tend to reproduce mystified instrumentalist images of language learning. From a critical view of language education, I discuss this simplistic ideological representation and the obligation of the profession of language education to address it.     

The construction of teacher identities in educational policy documents: A critical discourse analysis

Abstract

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a complex eclectic method that has potential to be a valuable tool for critical policy analysis. This article highlights this potential by demonstrating how CDA can be applied to policy texts. That is, it focuses on the processes involved in ‘doing’ critical discourse analysis. In particular, it examines the framework identified by Chouliaraki & Fairclough (1999) as the means by which CDA can be ‘operationalised’ in order to produce ‘theoretically grounded analyses in a wide range of cases’. The framework is outlined and discussed in relation to the construction of teacher identities in educational policies. The article then applies CDA to an analysis of one education policy document to illustrate the framework in operation. In so doing, it addresses the problem of teacher quality, which is analysed in terms of the discursive constructions of teachers’ professional identities. The analysis demonstrates how CDA may be used both as a tool for critical policy analysis and for the analysis of the construction of identities in educational, and other, documents.     

多视角下的语篇与世界之关系

语篇与其所反映的世界是相互影响、不可分割的。Johnstone在其《话语分析》一书中,从批评话语分析、语篇的照应和语篇的理解、萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说以及新马克思主义等四个角度探讨了语篇与世界之间的关系。其中批评话语分析作为一种语言分析的方法,已为许多社会科学所用,并贯穿文章始终;语篇照应和理解是从认知的角度认识心理表征;萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说则从语言与思维的辩证关系着手;新马克思主义角度则把语篇的社会性理论与语篇分析方法相结合,从而比较全面地揭示了语篇与世界的关系。     

A Critical Literacy Frame for UK secondary education contexts

This paper presents a pedagogical, analytical and heuristic tool for the critical analysis of texts, the Critical Literacy Frame, developed through a critical textual and discourse analysis of the genre of broadcast adversarial political interviewing, further informed by questionnaires and interviews with key informants. It is grounded in a social‐constructionist orientation to language, and is underpinned theoretically by insights from Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Literacy. The potential for such a frame, in the context of UK secondary education, particularly with reference to A level English Language and Citizenship, is considered and recommendations for pedagogy, curriculum, teacher‐education, policy and further complementary research are offered.     

The Making of the Ordinary Child in Preschool

The article examines parent–teacher conferences in Finnish and Swedish preschools. Previous research has shown that the conferences are mostly about the evaluation of the child. Based on qualitative data, the article studies how this evaluation is done. It asks how the institutional order regarding children is constructed in parent–teacher conferences and what the ordinary child is like that this order presumes. The theoretical framework is adopted from social constructionist research on childhood and institutions. The analysis applies a discourse analytic framework. The results suggest that being and becoming social is the key expectation for a child in Finnish and Swedish preschools; formal education and learning are not often mentioned. In addition, the results show that generational and gendered assumptions are important elements in the institutional order of preschool.     

The critical purchase of genealogy: critiquing student participation projects

Until recently the dominant critique of ‘student participation’ projects was one based on the theoretical assumptions of critical theory in the form of critical pedagogy. Over the last decade, we have witnessed the emergence of a critical education discourse that theorises and critically analyses such projects using Foucault's notion of ‘governmentality’. In this paper, I argue that while these governmentality studies challenge some of the key theoretical and taken for granted assumptions upon which such initiatives rest, they neglect to challenge the central assumption that such initiatives represent a historical break with traditional schooling practices. The importance of accounting for and critically analysing these projects within a historical framework will be argued through a discussion of Foucault's notion of genealogy as a particular conception and method of critique. It will also be demonstrated using an example, which shows an unacknowledged nineteenth century history of the current discourse and practice of student participation.     

Teachers in the news: a critical analysis of one US newspaper's discourse on education, 2006–2007

Public education discourse in the USA has been characterized by messages of crisis shaping education policies across national contexts. Education policy solutions target a lack of qualified teachers and insufficient oversight of teacher practice as central factors in the crisis, placing teacher identity as knowledgeable, authoritative professionals at the center of educational reform debates. Mainstream news media is a key site for education policy debate. I employ critical discourse analysis of education news published in a major US newspaper, uncovering how grammar patterns in news discourse situate teacher identity in relation to knowledge and authority. I demonstrate how the paper's discourse frames teacher identity in terms of Accountability and Caring and discuss how, in the context of larger economic and social policy debates, Accountability gains authority over caring to shape education policy. I call for teachers to integrate critical participation in public education debates as key element of professional identity.     

‘I'm not a computer person’: Negotiating participation in academic Discourses

While there is little doubt that technology is, in many ways, central to the college student experience today, the expectations of students and colleges vis‐à‐vis technology may not always be the same. This research explores the role of technology in the lives of today's college students, particularly within the institutional context of the university, and asks the question: What role does technology play in a freshman college student's participation in the academic Discourse of her institution? This paper focuses on the Discourse analysis of one student, Nichole, a focal participant in a semester‐long, qualitative study of 34 undergraduate students at a university in the northeastern United States. Nichole's general dislike of technology places her in opposition to assumptions about the ‘typical’ Net Gen student; results indicated that the ways in which Nichole used technology in her personal life conflicted with her participation in the pro‐technology academic Discourse of her institution. For Nichole, the disconnect between the institutional expectations for technology use and her personal technology practices resulted in the need to negotiate another layer of complexity on the path to academic success.     

话语体系研究的拓荒之作——吴汉全的《话语体系初论》评介

吴汉全所著《话语体系初论》是近年来专门研究话语体系的代表性著作.该著以马克思主义著作的解读为学术前提,为话语体系的研究提供了理论指导.同时,该著以话语体系为研究对象,集中研究话语体系的性质、类型、结构、功能、特征、转换、社会属性、逻辑架构、基本维度、运行机制、建构原则等问题,构建了话语体系的学术系统.该著有着显著的特色...     

Calling Integration into Question: A Discourse Analysis of English and Humash Classes at a Modern Orthodox Yeshiva High School

Drawing on discourse analysis and critical literacy, this study calls into question prevailing assumptions about integration by examining talk in English and Humash classrooms as windows into the two worlds of a Modern Orthodox high school. The study found that the two subjects presented very different models of teaching and learning. Humash was grounded in a Discourse of authority, whereas English was grounded in a Discourse of autonomy. In lieu of integration, this article recommends “counterpoise,” programming for meta-knowledge in which school members confront and openly discuss the distinctions between their Discourses.     

浅析政治新闻中的意识——以批评语篇分析理论为视角

批评语言学（critical linguistics）也叫批评语篇分析（critical discourse analysis）,是一种将语篇作为社会实践,重视语篇的生成,传播及接受过程的语篇分析方法,其目的是通过分析解释语篇背后隐藏的已被自然化的意识形态。本文尝试对一则纽约时报关于伊朗核问题的新闻报道进行批评性分析。研究应用了韩礼德的功能语法理论,旨在发掘文本隐含的意识形态,并丰富政治新闻语篇的研究方法,提高新闻阅读者的批评意识。     

Mutiny by Mutation: Uses of Neoteny in Science Fiction

Developmentalism and Romanticism represent contrary poles in an absolutist dichotomy that frames most Western discourse on childhood. This opposition is generally recognized in current childhood studies but the former discourse still dominates institutional practices. Both views, however, rely on similar presumptions—that development is a linear process, whether an ascent or descent; that childhood as a subjective position is best understood through simple absolutes; that through studying children we can know them and even learn about our adult selves. These common premises reinforce each discourses credibility and obscure their contradictions, justifying adult projections and stereotypes. In this essay I demonstrate the deconstruction of this binary in science fiction (my samples come from texts written for or popular among adolescents) and examine the more empowering views posited therein, exemplified by interpreting evolution as neotenous, or led by children.     

Teacher education: Wasteland or watershed?

It is established that the literature presents diverse positions on the impact of teacher education on beginning teacher practices. Teacher education is seen as a wasteland, a watershed for conservatism or progressivism, or a temporary influence quickly washed out by institutional and social conditions of school settings. The literature is unanimous in declaring teacher education inadequate. Data from a small scale interpretive study of entry into secondary school teaching are used to support two major claims. First, teacher education can function as a watershed equipping some beginning teachers with the competence and confidence to attempt reconstruction of existing school conditions. Second, no simple linear relationship exists between teacher education and beginning teacher practices; rather, they exist along with many other personal, institutional and social factors in a complex, interconnected network.