A social semiotic analysis of the discursive construction of teacher identity in the ‘book of rules and customs’ of the Australian Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Up until the 1960s, Catholic schools throughout most of the English‐speaking world were dominated by members of religious teaching orders, including female religious. For over a century following their establishment in 1866, one of the most prominent female religious teaching orders in Australia was that of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The first part of this paper contextualises the emergence of this particular religious order in terms of the development of Catholic education internationally and in Australia, and the associated ‘religious formation’ of nuns as teachers. Part two is centered on the most significant text used to guide the ‘religious formation’ of members of this order both as religious and as teachers, namely, that of their ‘rules and customs’. Drawing on an analytic approach based on a theory of social semiotics, it analyses both the sets of practices and the textual mechanisms through which the identity of members of the order as teachers was constructed.     

Mobilising Mother Cabrini’s educational practice: the transnational context of the London school of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus 1898–1911

A schoolteacher from Lombardy, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850–1917), founded the Institute of Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC) in 1880. It was one of the 185 female religious institutes established in Italy in the nineteenth century. In the newly unified Italy, Cabrini found opportunities to formulate progressive Catholic educational practice, to establish an independent female congregation and to mobilise her educational practice to the United States to serve Italian migrants. She established a school in London in 1902. Cabrini’s letters and convent annals are used to trace the use of transnational networks in founding the school and to consider the impact of the transnational context on the school start-up. The concept of mobilising educational practice embraces both the geographical movement of people, goods and money and the formation of teaching sisters. By her death Cabrini had established 59 schools and orphanages in Europe and the Americas.     

Mencius — A Trumpeter for Restoring the Slave System

Born in what is now known as Shantung Province's Tsou hsien, Mencius (c. 390-305 B.C.), whose family name was Meng and his name K'o, was a student of a disciple of Tzu Ssu who was Confucius' grandson. Mencius was a trumpeter for restoring the slave system and was long revered by the reactionary ruling classes as the "No. 2 sage," second only to Confucius, because he had inherited and made contributions in developing the reactionary theories of the Confucian school. The so-called "policy of benevolence," which was incisively criticized by Chairman Mao in On the People's Democratic Dictatorship, was a reactionary slogan which Mencius had done his utmost to advertise in his effort to restore the slave system. By criticizing his reactionary words and deeds and. analyzing the class content of his political line, we can better understand how the overthrown reactionary classes worked overtime to revive the old system and how they viciously attacked the new system. Through such criticism and analysis, we can also gain a deeper understanding of the class struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat and see clearly the counterrevolutionary nature of Lin Piao and other political swindlers.     

Aspects of the“Face”

This thesis focuses on different Chinese and western attitudes towards"Face"in communication.Based on Brown-Levinson’s Face Theory and the study on each definition of"Face"and its causes,it is concluded that Chinese people place emphasis on"collective face",whereas Westerners pay attention to"individual face".There is a mixture of factors that result in these salient differences,which should trace back to their long-existing historical,cultural and linguistic diversity.With the discussion on various aspects of the"face",there will be a better understanding of between Chinese and western intercultural communication.     

“Top of the Mark”

The present study investigated differences in the effectiveness of instructors from a variety of departments who taught the same course in both intensive and traditional formats within the same year, while controlling for many confounding variables. Results indicated that intensive courses did not significantly differ from traditional courses in overall instructor ratings on student evaluations of teaching effectiveness when confounding variables were taken into account. Conversely, intensive courses received significantly higher overall course ratings on student evaluations than did traditional courses, even after controlling for class size and probable grade in course. These findings provide further evidence that negative beliefs concerning intensive courses may be unjustified, and intensive courses may be as or more effective than those presented in traditional formats.     

Explicitness of the Fuzzy Cultural Connotation of “Canonization of the Gods”

《封神演义》是明朝中叶一部较优秀的神魔小说。作品包含了三教合流互相渗透的文化内涵,其文化内涵具有一定的模糊性。然深究其思想内涵,则其文化内涵的模糊性中,儒家传统的思想,特别是宋明理学是文本中的主导思想。文章试从社会文化基础、作者的文化心理及小说文化本身等层面,对造成这种现象的原因进行分析。     

Discourse Analysis of the Lyrics of the Song “Touch of Love”

This article tries to make an analysis of the song"Touch of Love"sung by Jacky Cheung,the king of pop singer in Hong Kong,from three aspects:person system,mood system and cohesion system based on the theory of systematic-functional grammar so as to deepen the understanding of the lyrics of this English song and improve their connoisseurship of English songs by the features embodied in the process of the discourse analysis of this piece of the song.     

Legacies of empire: from the “religions of China” to the “Confucian heritage” learner

ABSTRACT

In this article, we delve into the characterisation of international students as “Confucian Heritage” learners. To appreciate the implications of such iterative interpellation, we develop a genealogy of Sinology, which is here approached as the discursive effect of a colonial epistemic division of the world into free and democratic West and civilised and yet authoritarian East. In mapping the deployment of such heuristic in the management of international affairs during and after historical colonialism, we moreover demonstrate how the derivative characterisation of international students as “rote”, “dependent”, and inherently “prone to plagiarism” learners has been used to explain racism without race – that is, the epistemic exclusion of international students as a matter caused by factors other than race: lack of socially relevant cultural skills and communication barriers.     

“Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge”

Instructional Science -