Negotiating words and worlds: an autoethnography of linguistic identity development

This article presents an autoethnographic account of the author’s linguistic development as a speaker of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Standard American English (SAE). Historically, formal settings such as academic spaces have undervalued the use of AAVE; thus, creating tension for speakers of the language. In this study, the author reflects on her linguistic identity, and as a new doctoral student begins to interrogate her language beliefs and practices. This research is grounded in critical race theoretical perspectives and analyzes power, race, and language use for African Americans who speak AAVE and SAE. The author employs autoethnography methods to develop a narrative account of her experiences and reflect on the psychological and physical effects of code-switching and code-meshing as a student and teacher. This work can inform pedagogical approaches that support the teaching and learning needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students in urban classrooms.     

The use of selected theatre rehearsal technique activities with African-American adolescents labeled "behavior disordered".

The extensive literature on the overrepresentation of adolescent African-American male learners in classes for students identified as behavior disordered has essentially not addressed the problems caused by teacher reactions to adolescent conversational language use, the qualitative differences in language choices, or the impact of the conversational choices of adolescents on their educational treatment. This article explores how the dramaturgical perspective of selected Theatre Rehearsal Technique (TRT) activities can be used as learning experiences in communication with this student population. If these students gain quantifiable success in their social communication interactions, reassessment of their special education placement might facilitate their entrance into less restrictive educational environments.     

Out of the Ordinary: incorporating limits with Austin and Derrida

This article seeks to open up a re-examination of the relationship between thought and language by reference to two philosophers: John Austin and Jacques Derrida. While in traditional philosophical terms these thinkers stand far apart, recent work in the philosophy of education has highlighted the importance of Austin’s work in a way that has begun to bridge the philosophical divide. This article seeks to continue the renewed interest in Austin in educational research, yet also take it in new direction by exploring Austin’s wider philosophical concern within the William James Lectures with the nature of language. The significance of the philosophical turn to language has entered the agenda of a number of philosophers of education in recent years. The main aim of this article will be to present, as a starting point for further work, an account of language that does justice to the way language actually operates. The article will argue that Austin’s account of the performative opens up new possibilities in this regard and yet—for reasons that will be made clear—also fails in the final instance to carry these through. By illustrating the way Derrida’s philosophy works, contrastingly, to take these possibilities to their full conclusion, I will argue that Derrida succeeds in bringing a radically new conception of language to the fore. The article will end by pointing towards some of the implications of the initial exploration conducted here to be developed elsewhere—particularly for the ways we think about thinking.     

Taking the risk to engage in race talk: professional development in elementary schools

Developing public education where every child has the right to learn requires that teachers pay attention to and engage in race talk – open discussion about race, social construction of race, and racism. While it is clear that children engage and reflect critically about these aspects of race even at a young age, teachers rarely engage in race talk with them. In this study, an African-American preservice teacher and a White teacher educator explore how African-American, Polynesian, and White in-service teachers, participating in Courageous Conversations professional development, address or avoid race talk in their elementary schools through the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and what risks they take when they do. Findings, through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, demonstrate that (1) racism was observed and/or experienced by all teachers in elementary schools; (2) lived racial experiences impacted teachers’ approach to conversations about race; (3) creating an open space was crucial for race conversations; (4) Courageous Conversations provided a ‘new language’ to talk about race; and (5) administrative support facilitated more attention to race. Findings indicate the road to greater equity in schools requires more professional development about race talk in elementary schools.     

An exploration of school communication approaches for newly arrived EAL students: applying three dimensions of organisational communication theory

This article explores the modes of school communication associated with language and cultural diversity, demonstrating how organisational communication theory can be applied to the analysis of schools’ communication responses to the presence of pupils who have English as an additional language (EAL). The article highlights three analytical dimensions: the external factors influencing school communication systems; communication models reflected in school structures; and the content of communication between stakeholders. An exploratory study of a primary and a secondary school in the East of England, involving 32 semi-structured interviews with school managers, teachers, EAL staff, parents and newly arrived Eastern European students, reveals the interactional and transactional models of communication in the primary school, while the secondary school frequently used a linear approach. Communication in both schools showed a lack of information on EAL students and their parents, hindering a sustained outreach and empowering partnership, and possibly placing these students at a disadvantage.     

Mathematical Communication in the Classroom: A Teacher Makes a Difference

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) states that “Communication is an essential part of mathematics and mathematics education” (2000, p. 60). In fact, communication is one of the five process standards emphasized by NCTM. The communication standard highlights the importance of young children communicating their mathematical thinking coherently to peers and teachers. This standard also states that young children should use math language to express mathematical ideas (Baroody, 2000; Ginsburg, Inoue, & Seo, 1999; NCTM, 2000; Rubenstein & Thompson, 2002; Whitin & Whitin, 2003). Teachers must create a link between mathematics and language (Rubenstein & Thompson, 2002; Stigler & Hiebert, 2004). This article focuses on the informal strategies used by Melissa (a kindergarten teacher) that promoted the use of math language. The strategies were identified during a 3-month observational period in her classroom at Clinton Elementary (pseudonym). Clinton Elementary is located in a low-income neighborhood of a southern city that has a population of approximately 450,000. The neighborhood population is predominantly African-American (Davis, 1994).     

Tools for talking: the purposeful and inventive use of languages by bilingual children in primary classrooms

This article is based on a number of observations of bilingual children in an East London primary school, and some work carried out for a doctoral study. The article explores children’s views and perspectives on their use of first and second languages at home and at school. The kernel of the investigation is that language use is dependent on purpose. Bilingual children’s use of their first and second language depends on which language best serves a particular function. Often children who speak two or more languages on a regular basis combine these to create a new language. Schools therefore need to review their language policies and practices in relation to their pupil intake, taking into account the contribution of bilingual experience to children’s overall linguistic development. Teachers also need to understand parents’ views on their children’s language and literacy education. These issues are of vital importance if schools are to provide an inclusive curriculum.     

A Brief Analysis of African American Vernacular English(AAVE)—A Case Study of an AAVE Hip-Pop Son“gLive Your Life”

This paper tries to analyse the linguistic feafures of AAVE with a case study of a typical and popular AAVE hip-pop"Live your life"song sang by T.I.and Rihanna.And it also briefly analyses the potential social reasons that may contribute to the particular linguistic features of AAVE which is different from those of Standard American English.     

Dis-placing place-making: how African-American and immigrant youth realize their rights to the city

ABSTRACT

Notions of place-making assume that individuals and groups of people have legitimate ‘rights to the city.’ This paper unsettles these notions to incorporate the politically and legally tenuous relationships African-American and Immigrant youth have to their cities. We describe a community-based digital STEAM curriculum called Mobile City Science that invited youth to engage in place-making efforts using mobile and location-aware technologies. The design study relied on a contradiction that is fundamental to youth place-making in an era of white nationalism: for African-American and Immigrant youth to engage power structures in community development processes, they had to engage in a series of dis-placements that removed them from embodied experiences and in-location perceptions of their communities. Self-censoring, witnessing, historicizing, and re-veiwing were all examples of dis-placements youth enacted to speak truth to power with digital and mobile tools.     

Early Literacy Skills in African-American Children: Research Considerations

The poor reading achievement of African-American children in urban schools is well established. African-American children from low-income homes may be at particular risk for reading difficulties, although middle-income children often fare poorly as well. Intervention efforts have focused on children in kindergarten through fifth grade. This article suggests that prevention efforts must begin prior to kindergarten entry. Several key variables that may influence young children's performance, including poverty, general oral language skills, dialectal variations, home literacy practices, standardized testing bias, and teacher expectations, are explored. Future directions for research addressing emergent literacy in African-American children are discussed throughout.     

Computational communities: African-American cultural capital in computer science education

Enrolling the cultural capital of underrepresented communities in PK-12 technology and curriculum design has been a primary strategy for broadening the participation of students of color in U.S. computer science (CS) fields. This article examines two ways that African-American cultural capital and computing can be bridged in CS education. The first is community representation, using cultural capital to highlight students’ social identities and networks through computational thinking. The second, computational integration, locates computation in cultural capital itself. I survey two risks – the appearance of shallow computing and the reproduction of assimilationist logics – that may arise when constructing one bridge without the other. To avoid these risks, I introduce the concept of computational communities by exploring areas in CS education that employ both strategies. This concept is then grounded in qualitative data from an after school program that connected CS to African-American cosmetology.     

Reading/Writing Multilingualism: language,literature and creativity in the multilingual classroom

This article examines the relationship between the discipline of ‘English Literature’ and the contemporary multilingual classroom. It argues that, although our field has often been cast as a kind of corrective to the ‘problem’ of language diversity by helping to teach language norms, literature can – and should – be made a preeminent space for students to reflect on their own experiences of language diversity, and to translate this into self‐reflexive critical tools to think about language in literature. As an example of this kind of practice in action, the article discusses the experience and outcomes of a project in the English Literature department at Queen Mary University of London, Reading/Writing Multilingualism, which involved year 10 and 12 students from two local secondary schools who have English as an additional language.     

The Centralizing Role of Terminology: A Consideration of Achievement Gap,NCLB, and School Turnaround

American educational policies over the last 40 years have represented an uninterrupted movement toward centralization. This article analyzes three terms that have become critical to the centralization of American education. More specifically, this article reviews the development, language, and source of the thematic terms and associated language of achievement gap, NCLB, and school turnaround. The author contends that the level of each term's entrenchment in American education varies but that their impacts have all grown from a top-down initiative, and although the terms represent separate concepts, they have been linked in meaningful ways to drive centralization.     

Language use in kindergarten science lessons: language production and academic language during a video feedback coaching intervention in kindergarten science lessons

This paper aims to gain insight into language production and academic language of 4- and 5-year-old students and their teachers in the course of a teacher intervention during kindergarten science education. The study is based on videotaped classroom observations, and specifically focuses on the academic language use of students (N_intervention = 18, N_controls = 26) and teachers (N_intervention = 5, N_controls = 5). The results suggest that this general teacher intervention yields interesting changes in language use and production. Patterns of change over time confirm the idiosyncratic and non-linear nature of these changes. Science lessons represent an appropriate context in which to acquaint students with academic language, which can be used as a basis to build upon more sophisticated language skills.     

We have been living with this pain: enquiry-based language learning in Iranian higher education

This article explores an understanding of learning as authentic enquiry and language as a social practice of meaning construction as the theoretical perspectives underlying an educational initiation beyond mainstream tertiary language education. With a general ethnographic approach and relying on multiple data sources, we investigate critical practices of teaching medical English in an Iranian university and illustrate a contextualized instance of enquiry-based language learning that embodies enquiry and discovery in two senses: students’ research and learning about the content for oneself, and moving away from spoon-feeding views of academic language education to experience language in real social contexts. On this basis, we argue for stepping beyond predetermined content-based approaches to university language teaching and call for living the language that is being learned, which involves enquiring, experiencing, discovering, challenging, and owning it.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Conversation Stations</Emphasis>: Promoting Language Development in Young Children

Conversations are a primary tool for language development in preschool classrooms. Unfortunately, opportunities to have meaningful conversations between children and adults may not exist in preschool classrooms, especially those that serve children from high poverty contexts. Conversation Stations were implemented in preschool classrooms to ensure that high quality, consistent conversation would occur. In a Conversation Station, children have the opportunity to talk, to get feedback on their language, and to have appropriate language modeled for them. The Conversation Station can be used as an effective activity to promote language and vocabulary development in preschool classrooms. Using Conversation Stations allows for language development to be systematically included in everyday experiences in the classroom.     

Sexual health discussions between African-American mothers and mothers of Latino descent and their children

We examined approaches used by African-American mothers and mothers of Latino descent for informal sex-related discussions with their children to inform sexually transmitted infection (STI)/HIV intervention development efforts. We recruited mothers (of children aged 12–15) from youth service agencies and a university in southern California. Fourteen focus groups were conducted: eight with African-American mothers (n = 31) and six with mothers of Latino descent (n = 24). Data were transcribed, coded for most common themes by four of the authors and reviewed for differences by gender of child. Four key themes emerged when focusing on parent–child discussions about sex: (1) sexual activity discussions took place for both sons and daughters; (2) protection from STI/HIV and pregnancy was a key topic; (3) the use of a direct, honest approach was preferred by mothers; and (4) seizing the moment was important for discussion opportunities. These data help broaden our understanding about the strategies used by African-American mothers and mothers of Latino descent for sexual health discussions with their sons and daughters. Evaluations of these for their potential impact on youth sexual health outcomes are warranted. The data can also contribute to the development of new culturally tailored parent–child communication strategies and HIV prevention interventions for young people of colour.     

Motivations of Chinese Learners of Japanese in Mainland China

This article reports on the motivations of Chinese learners to learn Japanese in light of increasing diplomatic tensions between China and Japan over the last three decades. In the study, 35 Chinese learners of Japanese were selected, according to the time they began learning, to examine their motivations to learn Japanese as mediated by shifting sociopolitical conditions. Most began learning the language without enthusiasm, but became motivated and sustained their motivation to learn or use Japanese as they gained new Shiye (视野) (vision), Chuang (窗) (perspective), renshi (认识) (understanding), and other desirable attributes for their self-development. This improved their understanding of both the target language speakers’ communities and their own. These findings suggest that teachers and learners of Japanese could bridge the gap between the two communities (i.e., Chinese and Japanese) through language learning to sustain peaceful exchanges between them.     

Teaching and Learning Physics Using the Internet: the Baldufa Project

The aim of the Baldufa project that is presented in this article is to help both teachers and students in teaching‐learning activities in physics. A certain amount of HTML documentation is available, at this moment, to be used by students as learning aids. Teachers can propose their own pedagogical strategies via the Internet. For these reasons, the authors have programmed a server and have conceived a teaching package in HTML language.