First the look and then the sound: Creating conversations at circle time

Becoming a student means learning to interpret and construct the multiple demands for interaction in distinctive classroom events. For an increasing number of children, the preschool provides the setting for the first encounter with these complex and dynamic classroom communicative environments. This article presents an interactional analysis of preschool circle time from an ethnographic perspective. The social participation structure for conducting these events is uncovered using Green's conversational mapping system. Findings suggest that the rules and guidelines, expectations, and roles within the event change over time. The focus of learning within the event, evident in social action rules (Erickson, 1982, Philips, 1972), shifts from the formation of the circle itself to actual collaborative conversation. This shift is interpreted in terms of the children's developing competencies for participating in group conversation. In a final section, a potential peer culture dimension to this event is proposed.     

Awareness of inner experience: a systems perspective on self-regulatory process in early development

This brief synopsis of an organizational perspective on early development represents an integration of three major areas of the author's research: that of a detailed observational study of early mother-infant interaction over the first three years of life; that of a continuous neonatal state and caregiving interactional monitoring method over the first two months of life; and that of a 25- to 30-year follow-up on the same infants observed initially. From these data a ground plan is proposed for our thinking about the individual's life span trajectory as a unique construction within a unique context for that individual's interactional and adaptive self-regulatory strategies. Beginning with a review of biological principles, the paradoxical integration of complexity and unity in living systems is traced from the conceptualization of infant state and observations on its regulation through the role of state in the origins of awareness of inner experience, to the consolidation and validation of the self as agent in self-regulation. Central to integration is the recognition process, stemming from one's awareness that another is aware of what one is aware of within oneself. The constructionist perspective on the critical role of specificity in this organizing process is illustrated by reference to the negotiation between caregiver and infant of seven issues of adaptive coordination over the first three years of life. Finally, five propositions are formulated describing such specificity in this organizing process, as one that underlies integration of levels of the living system relating the biological, the developmental, the shaping of the life span trajectory, and the reconstructive therapeutic process.     

国际典型的产学研协同创新机制研究

产学研协同不仅有助于国家创新系统内的知识流动,也是提升国家产业技术能力的基本途径,已成为国家创新体系的重要组成部分.我国经济和科技发展“两层皮”的问题仍然存在,二者还存在着某种程度上的偏离,这在一定程度上影响了我国的国际创新战略竞争力.国际上典型的产学研协同创新机制是不同创新主体通过基于价值增值的知识流动联系在一起,在流动中实现价值增值.基于知识中介的产学研协同机制及发展趋势是对隐性知识的交流与转移,不能被竞争者轻意复制的独特技能,建立知识驱动,开放的及更加交互的创新系统.我国产学研协同创新可借鉴的有效解决方法是:开发专利协作模式;发展产学研协同创新的组合模式;建立产学研网络型创新模式.     

The effects of consequences on patterns of social interaction: a quasi-experimental approach to reinforcement in natural interaction

Research on social interaction has consistently documented the existence of mutual interdependencies between the behavior of 1 person and reactions to that behavior by others in the social environment. The concept of social reinforcement, although often used to explain acquisition and change in interaction patterns defined by such interdependencies, is difficult to apply to interaction observed in natural settings. On the basis of extended observation of the interaction of 2 mother-child dyads, the procedures needed to assess the effects of naturally occurring consequences on interactional patterns are detailed in this study. Reliable mother action-child reaction patterns were first identified, and the effect of maternal consequences for those patterns on the probability of their subsequent occurrence was assessed. Positive consequences were associated with increases, and negative consequences with decreases, in the probability of a child reacting to the next occurrence of the maternal action when compared to the base-rate probability of that action-reaction pattern. Thus consequences affect momentary shifts around the baseline probability of interactional patterns. Positive consequences were also associated with short-term increases, and negative consequences with short-term decreases, in the base-rate probability of interactional patterns.     

The interactive assembly of social identity: the case of latitude in classroom talk

In this paper the relationship of identity to a form of institutional interaction is considered, i.e. classroom talk. To illustrate this relationship and its variations, applied ethnomethodology was used to explore the issue of the behavioural and interactional latitudes that the participants afford one another. To do this, features of the assembly and coordination of identities for and in two classroom lessons were compared. The results illustrate ways in which the institutional identities of teacher and student are enacted through and in the interactions in classrooms. It is proposed that, even when such powerful categorizations as ethnicity, class and gender are readily available as potential organizers of practical events such as these lessons, the analysis needs to begin with the empirical structure of the events themselves, treating them as displays of coordinated reasoning practices, and thus treating the contingently assembled identities of the participants as social, locally activated, and resolutely practical.     

Conversational asymmetry and the child's perspective in developmental and educational research

Developmental research and educational practice involve conversations between children and adults. The conversational aspects of these situations have rarely been occasions for reflection. Discrepancies between the child's expectations and the adult's intentions can lead to misunderstanding, for example, at school or during a research interview. Communication can only succeed when the interlocutors agree about the ground rules relevant to the situation. When researchers and educators communicate with children, it is advisable that they understand the children's perspective on the interaction. In this article I argue that analysing adult‐child and child‐child interactions are particularly informative for shedding light on children's perspectives. Methodological aspects of interaction research are discussed. An overview of my research shows that, by clarifying the rules and conventions of the interaction, adults may help children to perform successfully. My interaction studies of pretend play and of students' discussions at school demonstrate that children reflect on the rules of interaction and make efforts to construct the communication tools they need for participating as competent partners in interactions with others.     

Coordinating attention to people and objects in mother-infant and peer-infant interaction

In a longitudinal study, infants 6-18 months of age were observed in their homes playing with their mothers and with peers. Of primary concern was how they coordinated their attention to people and objects. Observations were coded using a state-based scheme that included a state of coordinated joint engagement as well as states of person engagement, object engagement, onlooking, and passive joint engagement. All developmental trends observed were similar regardless of partner: person engagement declined with age, while coordinated joint engagement increased. Passive joint engagement, object engagement, and onlooking did not change with age. However, the absolute amount of some engagement states was affected by partner: both passive and coordinated joint engagement were much more likely when infants played with mothers. We conclude that mothers may indeed support or "scaffold" their infants' early attempts to embed objects in social interaction, but that as attentional capabilities develop even quite unskilled peers may be appropriate partners for the exercise of these capacities.     

Ethnic Heterogeneity,Group Affinity,and State Higher Education Spending

A rich interdisciplinary literature exists exploring the determinants of state higher education funding policies. However, that work has collectively ignored an important finding from political economy literature: namely, that citizens’ preferences regarding public spending are strongly influenced by the state’s ethnic and racial context. Drawing on a unique panel of state-level data covering the years 1982–2009, we find that states demarcated by increased racial and ethnic diversity and eroding white majorities do tend to spend less on subsidies to public higher education, resulting in decreased state appropriations as well as more tepid support for financial aid programs. Critically, however, we find that the negative effects of increased ethnic and racial fractionalization can be mitigated—and in some circumstances, fully offset—by a high degree of positive social interaction between ethnic and racial groups. These results are discussed within the pragmatic context of continued state emphasis on degree attainment as a mechanism to foster economic growth as well as broader considerations about equality and social justice.     

Universities responding to policy: Organisational change at the University of Namibia

In this article the development of the University of Namibia since itsestablishment (8 years ago) has been studied within the context of theformation of the newly-independent Southern African state of Namibia. Ahybrid framework, based on the major theoretical perspectives ofneo-institutionalism and resource dependency, has been utilized toanalyse the accounts of key respondents involved in these developmentsand hence derive an explanatory narrative of the changes involved inresponse to (government) policy.It is suggested that the major themes within this narrative may be ofexplanatory value when studying organizational change in small(developing) countries with relatively young institutions. Inparticular, the following concepts are worth highlighting: thenormatively strong but operationally weak state interacting with thenormatively weak but operationally strong institution; the commonpolitical elite, with institutional leaders sharing government values;and the relative informality of policy formulation and pluralism ofgovernment, with leading institutional actions having a policy sensingand shaping role.The loose set of themes devised from the interpretation ofsemi-structured interviews with a relatively small number of respondentscan also be considered as providing a conceptual framework for furtherresearch both within the specific institution and on a broadercomparative basis.     

全球化与中国政治发展

全球化将中国政治发展带入了一个全新的时空环境。各国间相互依存和互动关系的增强导致传统的国家主权受到制约 ,具体表现为 :全球性经济组织的运行是以参与国若干主权的让渡和转移为条件的 ;公众信息来源的日益广泛化、多元化 ;国际组织与国际公约作用的扩大 ;国家权力结构的变化。全球化对中国政府的能力提出了更高的要求 ,对政治文化的发展形成了双重影响 ,而且由于社会结构转型的同时进行 ,使情况变得更加复杂。推动中国政治发展必须具备全球意识和世界眼光 ,并把这种认识贯彻到国家内外战略包括政治发展战略中去     

Teacher Questioning: The Epicenter of Instruction and Assessment

In this article we examine some sequences of teacher–student interaction in which a teacher generates and acts on formative assessment data. We look at the teacher's practices of question construction and her decisions about in situ next pedagogical steps made in real time to support and further student learning. Our observations are guided by the following research questions: (a) What are the interactional practices that constitute formative assessment? (b) Are there observable classroom routines and organization that support these interactional practices? Our observations suggest that open and respectful pedagogical questioning is a key resource in eliciting students' current learning status, and for making decisions about next steps in student learning. Stable classroom routines and mutually understood interactional goals and practices are significant supports for these processes.     

以常规关系理论视角分析“非常规搭配”

词语之间的搭配分为两种：常规搭配和非常规搭配。非常规搭配不符合一般语法规则、逻辑规则、语义特征和/或语用习惯,因此,它们更具有吸引力,产生了特殊的语用效果。文章用常规关系理论对非常规搭配现象的产生进行分析,以探索其存在的理据及其语用功能。     

Mother‐Child Interactions and Early Intervention Programmes for Handicapped Infants and Young Children

Increased emphasis in the provision of early intervention programmes with families of biologically impaired or at‐risk infants, in recent years, has produced a wide variety of such services based upon various conceptual and empirical analyses of early development. The impact of these early interventions has been investigated quite extensively since the mid‐sixties, particularly regarding positive effects upon intellectual development. A synthesis of recent research regarding mother‐child interaction patterns and the influence of these social interactions upon cognitive, linguistic, and social development has resulted in a shifting emphasis in early interventions from the parent‐as‐teacher model to a parent‐infant interaction model. In concert with this shifting emphasis, interactional models of intervention are considered and described which provide the basis for identifying specific intervention strategies related to parent‐child interaction dynamics. These strategies provide the basis for programmes which would be sensitive to the idiosyncracies of individual families. That is, the unique characteristics of each family/infant may be more effectively accommodated through a transactional analysis of individual dyadic interaction patterns, and through the identification of strategies specifically suited to the unique needs of the parent‐child dyad.

     

被选举权的性质研究

公民享有选举权与被选举权，这已为世界各国及联合国人权公约所承认与保障，但关于公民的被选举权的性质则较少有讨论，从历史发展与权利的权能分析来看，被选举权的性质有别于参政权的其他权利，如选举权及担任公职权。这样的区分对于明晰概念及构建公民权利的制度保障，都具有重要的意义。     

Collaboration and Action Research: a cautionary tale

Action research has become a widely accepted and recommended methodology for teacher research. With the current climate of collaborative planning within primary schools. it has been seen as a process which could exist naturally alongside such activity, with much being made in the rhetoric of its essentially ‘collaborative’ character. But such claims are problematic. They derive importantly from epistemological considerations, but weaknesses may be found in such arguments when they are considered against the reality of the process in action. This article considers the claims for the collaborative nature of action research in the context of the progress of a coordinated inquiry in a primary school, within which the author was involved. Whilst recognising their importance, it challenges the arguments for insisting on collaboration as a prerequisite for the most ‘effective’ action research, suggesting that all action research is fundamentally personal. It also raises the question of whether participation in the process may itself raise conflicts with the need for a collaborative structure to ensure critical reflection and valid knowledge claims, suggesting that action research may at times have effects at a personal level which could produce severe tensions in the maintenance of a collaborative situation.     

Who's in the house? Race differences in cohabitation,single parenthood,and child development

This study examined four questions: (1) How does family structure (specifically, single parenthood, married parent, and cohabitating parent) affect children's delinquency and math test scores? (2) Do these effects differ by race? (3) Do parenting practices mediate the links between family structure and children's outcomes? and (4) Does this mediation differ by race? Unlike some previous work in this area, the present study distinguished between the effects of single parenthood and cohabitation. Using fixed-effects techniques to control for unobserved heterogeneity between children in the various family structures, single parenthood was found to be associated with reduced well-being among European American children, but not African American children. Cohabitation was associated with greater delinquency among African American children, and lower math scores among European American children. No evidence was found to indicate that parenting mediated the links between family structure and children's outcomes. Finally, it was found that for African American children, measures of maternal warmth and the provision of rules had direct effects on children's delinquency.     

Beyond production: learners’ perceptions about interactional processes

The interaction hypothesis of second language acquisition and associated work by Gass (Input, Interaction, and the Second Language Learner, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Mahwah, NJ, 1997), Long (The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition, in: W.C. Ritchie, T.K. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of Language Acquisition, Volume 2: Second Language Acquisition, Academic Press, New York, 1996, pp. 413–468), Pica (Language Learning 44 (1994) 493) and Swain (Three functions of output in second language learning, in: G. Cook, B. Seidlhofer (Eds.), Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics: Studies in Honour of H.G. Widdowson, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, pp. 125–144) suggest that negotiated interaction facilitates SLA. Researchers have claimed that developmentally beneficial interactional opportunities for learners include obtaining comprehensible input, receiving feedback, being pushed to make targetlike modifications in output, and having opportunities to test linguistic hypotheses. The current study focuses on learners’ roles in relation to these interactional processes, and examines learners’ perspectives in relation to researchers’ claims about interactional benefits. Forty-six learners of ESL from different L1 backgrounds were videotaped while interacting with peers, a teacher, and native speakers in intact classrooms and dyadic settings. The learners later viewed the tapes and introspected about their thoughts at the time of the original interactions. Results suggest that there was substantial overlap between the researchers’ claims and learners’ comments in relation to many of the interactional opportunities. A qualitative exploration of the learners’ perspectives revealed interesting insights into their perceptions about interactional processes. Overall, this study indicates that interaction research could profit from utilizing learners’ perspectives to supplement production data in the ongoing debate about the potentially beneficial processes of interaction.     

Educational Expansion and the Mediation of Discontent: The cultural politics of schooling in the Arab states

This paper probes the socioeconomic and political processes underlying the expansion of schooling in the Arab states. The paper, which does not report new data but rather critically reviews studies published so far, argues that both development and modernisation approaches, as well as class reproduction theories remain largely unable to account for the complex web of factors affecting educational expansion in the Arab states. These theories fail to point to the articulation of multi-level processes ultimately shaping the social and cultural underpinnings of educational expansion. Moreover, these theoretical approaches, beyond their paradigmatic differences, have confined Arab civil societies essentially to the structural outcome of state policies. Consequently, processes of civil dissent and resistance and their effects on educational expansion are naively conceptualised in terms of 'forces of tradition' versus 'forces of change'. The community-based, and conflict-laden power conjunctures shaping educational expansion in the Arab states have been largely left outside the analysis and the voices they represent often discarded. To probe the argument, first, the paper outlines the major macro-structural and historical factors affecting levels of literacy and access to educational resources in different Arab states. Secondly, published fieldwork research undertaken by others into community-based settings is examined in order to explore points of articulation between state policies, civil society processes and their sociopolitical and cultural effects on patterns of educational expansion. Thirdly, within the frame of a concluding discussion, the major implications are discussed and possible research paths are pointed to.     

Pete's Tool: Identity and sex-play in the design and technology classroom

ABSTRACT The paper explores the 'interactional work' of one boy in a technology lesson as he elaborates, through 'play' with workshop tools, a sexual fantasy of masturbation and penetration. This action is contextualised by his relations with others, and by the dominance of a prevailing myth of male sexuality in his construction of a masculine identity in the classroom. The role of the teacher in interpreting pedagogic style is considered. It is suggested that the dominance of hegemonic masculinity does not erase differences amongst boys; that it is 'taken up' differently by groups and individuals in the interplay of other cultural texts/discourses. It is suggested that viewing the work of identity as both a personal and a social project, in which individuals act distinctly and yet 'within pattern', provides a starting point for understanding the contingent but committed construction of heterosexual gender relations of domination.     

Examining the nature and effects of feedback dialogue

Research has conventionally viewed feedback from the point of view of the input, thus analysing only one side of the feedback relationship. More recently, there has been an increased interest in understanding feedback-as-talk. Feedback dialogue has been conceptualised as the dynamic interplay of three dimensions: the cognitive, the social-affective and the structural. We sought to explore the interactional features of each dimension and their intermediary effects on students. We analysed students’ feedback dialogue excerpts as cases using interactional analysis. Analysis involved iterative inductive and deductive coding, and interpretation of feedback texts generated in an online course. The cognitive, social-affective and structural dimensions were interwoven within excerpts of feedback dialogue with effects on learners that extended beyond the immediate task (e.g. reframing of learners’ ideas, critical evaluation). The interactional features of each dimension include: cognitive (e.g. question asking, expressing oneself); social-affective (e.g. disclosure, expressing empathy); and structural (e.g. longitudinal opportunities for dialogue, invitational opportunities). The study provides evidence that strengthens the call for reconceptualising feedback as a dialogic and relational activity, as well as supporting the view that dialogic feedback can be a key strategy for sustainable assessment.