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.     

Developing the classroom as a “figured world”

This article introduces an empirical analysis of the potentials and contradictions of a narrative playworld intervention aimed at changing the pedagogical practices of a Finnish mixed-age elementary school classroom in spring 2004. In the playworld, students and teachers explore different phenomena by taking on the roles of characters from a story and acting inside the frames of an improvised plot. The analysis is based on an understanding of school as a historically and culturally formed activity system. The playworld, on the other hand, is understood as a collective imagined and materialized figured world. The findings show that for the teachers, the main contradiction in the playworld was between keeping control and promoting student initiatives. For the students, the contradiction arose between the student role and that of agent in the playworld. However, the contradictions also created the main developmental potentials of the activity. That the playworld was not only a tool for transforming classroom work but a world in which to belong made it possible to sustain the activity and make it a regular part of classroom practices.

Developing a Pedagogy of “Making” through Collaborative Self-Study

We believe that the ideas associated with the Maker Movement have profound implications for teacher education. We have isolated the pedagogical principles of hack, adapt, design, and create as central to exploring how they work with teacher candidate participants in a maker pedagogy lab. We frame these ideas as Maker Pedagogy, which is the enactment of the principles inspired by the maker movement in the classroom to foster learners who operate as innovators, creators, sharers and givers of knowledge, tools and technologies. The purpose of our self-study research is to describe, interpret and analyze how our pedagogies of teacher education and our critical friendship have changed and developed as a result of providing experiences for teacher candidates in our maker pedagogy lab. In this project we use self-study methodology to investigate our teaching and practices, and we dialogue about our tacit and personal knowledge as it contributes to the knowledge and understanding of our teaching through Maker Pedagogy. In particular, the emphasis is on critical collaborative inquiry through critical friends and on dialogue as a valued component of our research. Of particular interest were data in the video recordings of each lab that indicated that one or both of us had reframed our understanding of maker pedagogy. The findings are framed as three themes that document what we are learning about Maker Pedagogy through teaching teacher candidates. These are (1) the value of self-study methodology, (2) Maker Pedagogy as distinct and (3) deepening our pedagogies of teacher education.     

Developing mathematics teacher knowledge: the paradidactic infrastructure of “open lesson” in Japan

In this paper, we first present a theoretical approach to study mathematics teacher knowledge and the conditions for developing it, which is firmly rooted in a systemic approach to didactic phenomena at large, namely the anthropological theory of the didactic. Then, a case of open lesson is presented and analysed, using this theoretical approach, to show how the format of open lesson contributes to the construction and diffusion of didactic knowledge in the community of mathematics teachers in Japan. The basic idea of this format is that teachers from other schools are invited to observe a class taught by a teacher then participate in a discussion session with him on the details of the lesson. For the case study, we analyse the lesson plan prepared for an open lesson, the observed lesson and the teachers’ discussion. As a result, an open lesson session has been described as a specific form of post-didactic practice related directly to an actual observed lesson, and aiming specifically at elaborating the theoretical aspects of teacher’s didactic practice in the lesson and beyond it.     

“Don’t rock the boat”: conflicting mentor and pre-service teacher narratives of professional experience

This article examines conflicting mentor (school-based supervising teacher) and pre-service teacher narratives of professional experience in schools. It draws on a small narrative inquiry about the mentoring relationship in teacher education. Interview conversations were analysed using “writing as a method of inquiry”, allowing for a recursive understanding of the competing discourses that emerged, and highlighting the tensions in the mentoring relationship. While the pre-service teachers interviewed for this study expected professional experience to provide opportunities for innovation and collaboration, mentors tended to view the relationship as assimilation into the profession. Two points of challenge are identified where disruption to the tensions that arise from these competing narratives is needed if changes to educational equity are to occur.     

“We don't want your opinion”: Knowledge Construction and the Discourse of Opinion in the Equity Classroom

As educators who teach courses that examine social power, we often struggle with a specific form of resistance in the equity-oriented classroom: “That's just [the author]'s opinion.” This “opinion discourse” emerges when students study scholarship that unsettles dominant knowledge claims and methods or when students are themselves asked to situate their knowledge. The opinion discourse could easily be read as simply an example of the lack of critical thinking skills among students. However, we believe that opinion discourse is more than a facile response to new ideas. We want to take opinion discourse seriously. We argue that opinion functions as a discursive project of resistance in the context of the equity-oriented classroom by solidifying inequitable power relations between the knower and that which is known. Our goals are twofold: to explicate how the opinion discourse functions as a specific legitimization of existing power relations and to unsettle the discursive authority that opinion offers.     

Developing Teachers' Leadership Knowledge: Pillars for the “New Reform”

This work describes how teacher education programs can inform teachers' knowledge and practice of leadership. We introduce a leadership typology to illustrate how teachers can lead organizational reform for pedagogical excellence and socially just practices. The model provides teacher educators ways to identify and resolve conflicts generated by imparting innovative pedagogies to teachers who in turn use them in antiquated and inequitable school environments. The model can also be used to develop teachers' professional knowledge of the contexts that mitigate or marginalize their leadership potential. Several examples from current teaching practices in teacher education are used to illustrate how teachers develop leadership knowledge.     

‘Pastoral Care’ as Curriculum Discourse: a study in the reformation of ‘academic’ schooling

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the significance of the recent development of pastoral care as a distinct category of secondary school provision. It argues that existing accounts of the rise of pastoral care fail to take on board the relationship between changes in the school curriculum and their wider context. It also suggests that the separation and construction of pastoral care as distinct from the ‘academic’ is only one dimension of, and can only be understood in the context of, a changing curriculum. Pastoral care is not a ‘new’ area, but results from, and was made possible by, a reformulation and fragmentation of what counts as ‘academic’. Finally, it proposes that this consolidation of social/personal concerns under the category of ‘pastoral care’ acquired particular significance in response to tensions created through the reorganization of secondary schooling. Pastoral care provided the means by which the contradictions embedded within comprehensivization could be reconciled.     

Application of a Discourse Approach to Speaking in Teaching of Conversation

In this essay the author attempts to put forward an innovative teaching mode in the course of ＂English Conversation＂ for sophomore English majors in China. In this mode an authentic conversation is used as the teaching material and the theoretic aspects of Conversation Analysis （CA） are applied for the teaching of the course. This mode can be carried out by English teachers as a teaching experiment and then the teaching effects can be measured through comparison with the traditional teaching mode in which no authentic teaching materials are used.     

From Within the Belly of the Beast: Rethinking the Concept of the ‘Educational Marketplace’ in the Popular Discourse of Education Reform

The task of this article is to carry out a synthetic analysis of the concept of the educational marketplace as it is used in the popular discourse of education reform so as to unpack what has become a commonsensical idea in American politics. It is a conceptual framework that has opened an ever-expanding sovereign space in the American state for the colonization of a public institution by the private sphere by means of public policy. The results of this analysis suggest that the reform policies associated with the concept of the educational marketplace are ineffective in raising average student achievement, have a high probability for generating significant social costs, and are a manifestation of an articulation of power now in ascendancy in the United States.     

When Fact Conceals Privilege: Teaching the (Shared?) Reality of Disability

Disability studies in education scholars have discussed the need to engage students, and certainly preservice teachers, in critical discussion of disability as a concept. To better understand what such critical discussion entails, Ashley Taylor examines the pedagogical implications of promoting an understanding of disability as a shared experience of being human. In particular, Taylor is concerned with how the appeal to a shared experience of disability (which she calls “the shared reality view”) might contribute to or impede students' development of critical attitudes toward ableist social and educational practices. She describes two chief limitations of the shared reality view and argues that these complicate efforts to teach about disability in ways that avoid reinforcing students' existing beliefs. Taylor concludes by offering a pedagogical framework that retains valuable aspects of the shared reality view while avoiding its limitations.     

In the same boat? An online group career counseling with a group of young adults in the time of COVID-19

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - An online group of career counseling for unemployed young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic was developed. Twelve participants were...     

Constructing “world-class” as “global”: a case study of the National University of Singapore

This article investigates the ways in which newly-established higher education institutions (HEIs) position themselves as “world-class” through constructing themselves as “global”. With the escalating “free market” and competitive forces arising from the marketization of education, most universities see a construction of themselves as global universities as a necessity, where the global mark is valued as a signal of quality across markets and thus positions the universities as world-class. This study specifically examines how one very successful emerging university, the National University of Singapore, constructs and promotes itself as a global institution through three strategies.     

Developing Elementary Teachers’ Understandings of Hedges and Personal Pronouns in Inquiry-Based Science Classroom Discourse

This study examined the effectiveness of introducing elementary teachers to the scholarly literature on personal pronouns and hedges in classroom discourse, a professional development strategy adopted during a summer institute to enhance teachers’ social understanding (i.e., their understanding of the social functions of language in science discussions). Teachers became aware of how hedges can be employed to remain neutral toward students’ oral contributions to classroom discussions, invite students to share their opinions and articulate their own ideas, and motivate students to inquire. Teachers recognized that the combined use of I and you can render their feedback authoritative, you can shift the focus from the investigation to students’ competence, and we can lead to authority loss. It is argued that explicitness, reflectivity, and contextualization are essential features of professional development programs aimed at improving teachers’ understandings of the social dimension of inquiry-based science classrooms and preparing teachers to engage in inquiry-based teacher–student interactions.     

Preschool Teachers’ Implementation of Vocabulary Strategies During Shared Reading: a Comparative Study

Research Findings: Shared reading is reported to be the single best instructional practice for emergent literacy skills. Vocabulary instruction practices implemented during shared reading by both Head Start (HS) teachers and teachers from more affluent private school settings were compared to determine whether there were differences between the 2 groups of teachers in their implementation of research-based practices. HS teachers implemented vocabulary instruction practices during shared reading more often, and chose different words to instruct, than private school teachers. Whereas 78% of HS teachers provided some vocabulary instruction during shared reading, only 59% of private school teachers did so. Among those teachers who provided vocabulary instruction during shared reading, HS teachers used significantly more contextualization strategies for word instruction than private school teachers. These findings suggest that preschool teachers who work with children from high-needs backgrounds use vocabulary instruction during shared reading as a way to bolster children’s vocabularies more frequently than teachers working in private preschools that serve children from more privileged backgrounds. Extratextual language was also compared, and private school teachers had a higher mean length of utterance and type–token ratio than the HS teachers. Practice or Policy: Professional development is recommended for preschool teachers to increase the implementation of best practices for vocabulary instruction during shared reading.     

Pursuing the Qualities of a “Good” Test

This article examines the issue of the quality of teacher-produced tests, limiting itself in the current context to objective, multiple-choice tests. The article investigates a short, two-part 20-item English language test. After a brief overview of the key test qualities of reliability and validity, the article examines the two subtests in terms of test and item quality, using standard classical test statistics. Unsurprisingly, the pretested items outperform the teacher-produced test. The differences between the two subtests underscore issues about the quality (or lack thereof) of teacher-produced tests. The article ends with suggestions of how teacher-produced tests might be improved.     

Developing rigid constraint for the estimation of pose and structure from a single image

INTRODUCTION Pose and structural parameters analysis of 2Dimages sets find application in many areas such asobject recognition, motion estimation, navigationplanning, and structural analysis of 3D objects(Huang and Netravali, 1994), image communica-tion, and image coding (Mitiche and Aggarwal,1986). Normally, given one set of 3D object pointdata and their corresponding 2D projective imagepoint data, the 3D-2D calibration problem is re-ferred to as the estimation of the camera par…