Preschoolers Flexibly Shift Between Speakers' Perspectives During Real-Time Language Comprehension

In communicative situations, preschoolers use shared knowledge, or “common ground,” to guide their interpretation of a speaker's referential intent. Using eye-tracking measures, this study investigated the time course of 4-year-olds’ (n = 95) use of two different speakers’ perspectives and assessed how individual differences in this ability related to individual differences in executive function and representational skills. Gaze measures indicated partner-specific common ground guided children's interpretation from the earliest moments of language processing. Nonegocentric online processing was positively correlated with performance on a Level 2 visual perspective-taking task. These results demonstrate that preschoolers readily use the perspectives of multiple partners to guide language comprehension and that more advanced representational skills are associated with the rapid integration of common ground information.     

Roots and Rhizomes—Some Reflections on Contemporary Pedagogy

During this article, I look at three images of thought which feature in Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus and consider their relevance to contemporary pedagogy. Deleuze and Guattari begin by discussing tree‐like thought, which involves an insular depiction of the world. I suggest that the performative apparatus, which structures contemporary pedagogy in the comprehensive school, is also tree‐like. Deleuze and Guattari's second image of thought is the fascicular root. Here the principle root is aborted leading to a multiplicity, which flows from it. With fascicular thought, the unity, which is aborted in the object, is returned to in the subject who gains control of multiplicities. In this section I provide a reading of a Classics lesson portrayed in The Secret History by Donna Tartt and go on to focus on Ronald Barnett's contribution to a debate with Paul Standish, which features in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education. In the third section of the article, I consider Deleuze and Guattari's third image of thought—the rhizome. Rhizomes grow by a process of cloning or lateral spreading; they do not have the central trunk of the tree, with roots and branches extending outwards from this. At the end of this section, I look at two Classics lessons that represent tree‐like and rhizomatic pedagogies in turn. I attempt to enrich this discussion by providing a reading of a scene from The History Boys.     

Liberation or Oppression?—Western TESOL Pedagogies in China

In this article, we examine power relations in College English teaching in China, focusing on the symbolic capital of English as a global language. Framing our discussion with Bourdieu's concept of symbolic capital and a review of literature, we problematize the importation of pedagogies from Western countries to China and argue that seemingly liberating pedagogies, such as the communicative language teaching approach, can be turned into a form of oppression of both the instructors and the students. Drawing on Freire's critical pedagogy, we propose that a truly liberating pedagogy should be based on a dialogical relationship between policy-makers, teachers, and students in consideration of the specific economic, social, and cultural backgrounds of the students and teachers.     

Educational Reconstruction of Bavaria under U.S. Occupation

This paper examines the construction of verbal and visual images of teachers and teaching in English‐language manuals of pedagogy from 1850 to the present. It arises from a number of interests arising from poststructural interests in reworking both Cartesian dualism and its implications for pedagogy. It examines manuals of teaching in the light of the notion of pedagogy as fully corporeal and performative, a concept which focuses attention on the reiterative (bodily) enactment of what have come to be established meaningful gestures, postures and actions. It argues that for the most part the verbal constructions of teachers and teaching in these texts offer a de‐corporealised, mentalistic account of teachers and teaching, but that in their margins they also construct the materials from which a more corporealised, performative account of teacher and teaching might be construed. Finally, it considers visual illustrations of teachers, and the extent to which they might offer a more thoroughly performative view of teaching. It concludes that this possibility is in fact contained by the pervasiveness of the dualist discourses in which they are framed.     

Expertise,authority and embodied pedagogy: operatic masterclasses

The paper reports a study of masterclasses for young opera-singers, taught by experienced, world-class singers. These and similar forms of learning in the creative and performing arts represent fertile opportunities for the investigation of pedagogy. Given the recent ‘performative’ turn in sociological studies of education, and of cultural forms more widely, it is especially pertinent to examine the work of pedagogy in an overtly performative context. The operatic masterclass is made possible by the embodied authority of the teacher, and by her or his charismatic authority. The masterclass itself is marked by repetition, attention to technical detail, and to interpretative flexibility. Expertise is shared through gesture, metaphor, demonstration and personal maxims. Technical and interpretative knowledge are synthesised through the teacher’s personal authority. These processes illustrate the communities of pedagogy associated with artistic communities of practice.     

Preschool Teachers' Sense of Community,Instructional Quality,and Children's Language and Literacy Gains

Research Findings: This study investigated relations among preschool teachers' (n = 75) sense of community, classroom language and literacy instructional quality, and children's (n = 398) gains in vocabulary and print concept knowledge during an academic year. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) results indicated that teachers' language and literacy instructional quality significantly predicted children's gains in print concept knowledge. Also, HLM results revealed significant interactions among teachers' sense of community, language and literacy instructional quality, and vocabulary and print concept knowledge gains. Higher levels of teachers' sense of community were associated with greater gains in children's vocabulary and print concept knowledge when children were in classrooms with higher quality language and literacy instruction. Practice or Policy: Findings underscore the importance of evaluating both language and literacy instructional quality and teachers' sense of community when considering high-quality preschool education.     

PROTECTing the figure of innocence: child pornography legislation and the queerness of childhood

In US v. Williams (2008), the Supreme Court upheld the PROTECT Act; this law's “pandering provision” prohibits the distribution and solicitation of child pornography, but does not distinguish between real child pornography and “virtual” child pornography (images that are digitally created or manipulated and do not depict a real child). Situating this case at the intersection of rhetorical studies of the law and queer studies, I read the Court's opinions as rhetorical and cultural texts that circulate a strategic figuration of the child that emphasizes its sexual purity, vulnerability, and whiteness, and disavows the queerness of childhood desires. I argue that the Court's decision virtualizes the figuration of the child through the performative “collateral speech” act, ultimately conflating virtual materials with real children. Furthermore, I contend that the language of the law, as it taxonomizes and disciplines illicit desires, also expresses desire through its passionate figurations of childhood innocence and adult sexual morality.     

“DARING TO SAY”: STANLEY CAVELL AND DESIGNS ON LITERACY

In this essay Amanda Fulford examines the subject of inter‐cultural understanding from two perspectives: first, through considering Naoko Saito's exploration of translation and inter‐/intra‐cultural understanding, and second, through a discussion of work from the field of literacy studies, in particular the New London Group's “pedagogy of multiliteracies.” In her consideration of the different approaches taken to the challenge of multicultural and globalized societies, and the experiences of encounters with language, Fulford pursues four principal themes: learning from difference, active design of meaning, a relation with language, and transformation of the individual. She shows how Saito's use of American philosophy, in particular Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Stanley Cavell's readings of Thoreau, can play a crucial role in any reconsideration of teaching and learning in adult literacy education. Fulford further demonstrates how Thoreau's notion of the “father tongue” is central to the idea of learning from difference and to our use of language. She concludes by proposing that literacy education and research within the field of literacy studies could benefit from the kind of philosophical conversation, across the borders of subject and epistemology, that an exposure to, and consideration of, the ideas of Thoreau and Cavell on what it means to read and write can offer.     

Language as Sensuous Action: Sir Richard Paget,Kenneth Burke,and Gesture-Speech Theory

This somatic genealogy of Dramatism's core terms—symbolic action, attitude, identification—argues for the importance of keeping rhetoric, rhetorical theory, and rhetorical pedagogy more closely tied to bodies that generate, induce, and respond to rhetoric. It does so by examining Burke's use of Sir Richard Paget's theory that spoken language derives from the use and development of bodily gestures. An examination of Paget's theory in Burke's early work serves as a jarring reminder that rhetoric is always a joint performance of body and mind.     

'Is-when' stories: Practical repertoires and theories about the practical

The issue of being 'practical' presents a continuous challenge, because student teachers' meanings for that word tend to be in sharp contrast to meanings that allow inquiry and are connected to personal and cultural histories. Instructor and student perspectives elucidate the struggle to find a compromise within this tension in the form of a particular narrative exercise assigned in a foundations course of a teacher-training programme. Investment of identity and performative language were required in order to construct collaboratively a narrative repertoire of techniques and strategies that was practical in a non-technical sense.     

Book Reviews

Book Reviewed in this article: Activating participation: parents and teachers working towards partnership : G. Crozier & D. Reay (Eds) Making sense of children's drawing : Angela Anning & Kathy Ring Issues in Holocaust education : G. Short & C. A. Reed Rethinking religious education and plurality: issues in diversity and pedagogy : Robert Jackson Curriculum studies in post‐compulsory and adult education: a teacher's and student teacher's guide : Mary Neary Succeeding in diversity: culture, language and learning in primary classrooms : J. Conteh     

Exploring Early Years educators' ownership of language and communication knowledge and skills: a review of key policy and initial reflections on Every Child a Talker and its implementation

This article examines four significant policy documents that have informed the Department for Children School and Families (DCSF)' s Every Child a Talker (ECaT). The analysis focuses on where the ownership of knowledge in relation to communication and language lies as part of policy implementation and training processes. The article then progresses to focus on ECaT, exploring whether it contributes anything new to promote a sustainable development of communication and language for educators and young children. It focuses on the development of educators' specialist knowledge and skills supported by critical reflection on relevant theory and research. In doing so, European perspectives on pedagogy are explored. The article concludes with discussion of possible implications for ECaT and its implementation.     

Representation and the Straightjacketing of Curriculum's Complicated Conversation: The pedagogy of Pontypool's minor language

Reconceptualist and post‐reconceptualist curriculum scholars have drawn upon the notion of a complicated curriculum conversation as a means to describe the imbricated, pluralist, and eclectic character of curriculum theorizing. Insofar as this curriculum conversation is accomplished via language however, it remains wed to a particular representational logic restricting what might be thought. This essay explores the question of what it means to theorize curriculum when the very idea of a complicated curriculum conversation begins to fall into cliché. Mobilizing the philosophical thought of Gilles Deleuze, this essay analyzes three representational commitments of contemporary curriculum theorizing, addressing how each are inadequate for the theorization of difference or the instantiation of the radically new. Against the implicit commitment to conformity alive in the curriculum field, this essay posits an ethics of disidentification exemplified via Bruce McDonald's horror film Pontypool. It is via such a tactic of productive disidentification, this essay claims, that thought might be unfettered from the orthodoxies of common sense, becoming in this way more adequate for opening spaces unanticipated by contemporary representational regimes.     

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.     

Hospitable Gestures in the University Lecture: Analysing Derrida's Pedagogy

Based on archival research, this article analyses the pedagogical gestures in Derrida's (largely unpublished) lectures on hospitality (1995/96), with particular attention to the enactment of hospitality in these gestures. The motivation for this analysis is twofold. First, since the large‐group university lecture has been widely critiqued as a pedagogical model, the article seeks to retrieve what may be of worth in the form of the lecture. Second, it is relevant to analyse the pedagogy of lectures that address the topic of hospitality, as there would be a performative contradiction in teaching inhospitably about hospitality.     

Performativity,fabrication and trust: exploring computer-mediated moderation

Based on research conducted in an English secondary school, this paper explores computer-mediated moderation as a performative tool. The Module Assessment Meeting (MAM) was the moderation approach under investigation. I mobilise ethnographic data generated by a key informant, and triangulated with that from other actors in the setting, in order to examine some of the meanings underpinning moderation within a performative environment. I argue that in this particular case performativity has become entrenched in teachers' day-to-day practices, and not only affects those practices but also teachers' sense of self. I suggest that MAM represented performative and fabricated conditions and (re)defined what the key participant experienced as a vital constituent of her educational identities – trust. From examining the case in point, I hope to have illustrated for those interested in teachers' work some of the implications of the interface between technology and performativity.     

Passionate Utterance and Moral Education

This paper explores Stanley Cavell's notion of ‘passionate utterance’, which acts as an extension of/departure from (we might read it as both) J. L. Austin's theory of the performative. Cavell argues that Austin having made the revolutionary discovery that truth claims in language are bound up with how words perform, then gets bogged by convention when discussing what is done ‘by’ words. In failing to account for the less predictable, unconventional aspects of language, the latter therefore washes his hands of the expressive passionate aspects of speech. To ignore such aspects is to ignore an important moral dimension of language. Finally, I bring Cavell's approach to bear on the epistemic criterion, which Michael Hand applies in his paper ‘Should We Teach Homosexuality as a Controversial Issue?’. I suggest that Hand's approach, by failing to account for the linguistic dimension of truth and the expressive quality that accompanies this dimension, presents an overly narrow conception of moral education.