Malala: the story of a Muslim girl and a Muslim nation

ABSTRACT

In this article, we analyze the coverage of Malala in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to explore how these influential media sources characterize Islam and Pakistan to tell Malala’s story. Our discourse analysis reveals how these newspapers construct Malala’s status as a global icon as an embodiment of her subject position as a girl. This media discourse mobilizes Malala’s agency in relation to her potential as an individual whereas her vulnerability as a young girl is presented in reference to her Muslim heritage and culture. Malala’s image as a global icon, thus, is produced through approaching her as an agent in a culture where girls are vulnerable victims of patriarchy. Through focusing on this media discourse, this article argues that Malala’s image as a global icon of girls’ education has become a site to reinsert, rather than challenge, the dominant images about Islam and Muslim societies.     

The uses of (digital) literacy

This article shares research facilitated by a multinational technology provider, converging mobile networked technology (tablets) used across school and home, a technology enhanced community ‘third space’ providing workshops for students aged 6–9 with their parents/carers. The approach taken avoids the instrumental measurement of functional digital literacy competences, but instead seeks to negotiate a more nuanced and complex understanding of the ‘uses of literacy’ [from Hoggart, R. 1957. The Uses of Literacy. London: Pelican] in digital contexts and in a deeply situated, specific local setting. Working with our findings, we later put Amartya Sen’s concept of capability [Sen, A. K. 2005. “Human Rights and Capabilities.” Journal of Human Development 6 (2): 151–166; Sen, A. K. 2008. “Capability and Well-Being.” In The Philosophy of Economics, edited by D. M. Hausman, 3rd ed., 270–293. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] to work on our data in order to provide a discussion on how the digital literacy community might distinguish digital competences as functionings from the ‘uses’ of such competences for a broader range of capabilities.     

What digital games and literacy have in common: a heuristic for understanding pupils' gaming literacy

This article argues that digital games and school‐based literacy practices have much more in common than is reported in the research literature. We describe the role digital game paratexts – ancillary print and multimodal texts about digital games – can play in connecting pupils’ gaming literacy practices to ‘traditional’ school‐based literacies still needed for academic success. By including the reading, writing and design of digital game paratexts in the literacy curriculum, teachers can actively and legitimately include digital games in their literacy instruction. To help teachers understand pupils’ gaming literacy practices in relation to other forms of literacy practices, we present a heuristic for understanding gaming (HUG) literacy. We argue our heuristic can be used for effective teacher professional development because it assists teachers in identifying the elements of gameplay that would be appropriate for the demands of the literacy curriculum. The heuristic traces gaming literacy across the quadrants of actions, designs, situations and systems to provide teachers and practitioners with a knowledge of gameplay and a metalanguage for talking about digital games. We argue this knowledge will assist them in capitalising on pupils’ existing gaming literacy by connecting their out‐of‐school gaming literacy practices to the literacy and English curriculum.     

Linking literacy teaching with assessment: a continuing professional development initiative for secondary schools

As part of a professional development initiative helping secondary school teachers use assessment data to guide their instruction, teachers in this study changed their knowledge, skills and dispositions. Over time, they were able to identify assessments, administer these assessments, interpret the results and plan instruction. As a result, the students who were tutored by these teachers increased their achievement compared with a control group.     

Designing a curriculum model for the teaching of the Bible in UK Jewish secondary schools: a case study

This paper describes the process of designing a curriculum model for Bible teaching in UK Jewish secondary schools. This model was designed over the period 2008–2010 by a team of curriculum specialists from the Jewish Curriculum Partnership UK in collaboration with a group of teachers from Jewish secondary schools. The paper first outlines the context of UK Jewish secondary schools and then the curriculum context in which this specific model was designed. It then details the model itself and concludes with a discussion of the implementation of the model and associated challenges.     

Dimensions of digital literacy based on five models of development / Dimensiones de la alfabetización digital a partir de cinco modelos de desarrollo

Abstract

Digital literacy has been an emerging and increasing priority in many governments’ educational and assessment policies since the first decade of the twenty-first century because it is a priority in citizenship training. The difficulty with understanding and developing it comes from its changing, transversal and flexible nature; for this reason, the fundamental objective of this research is to offer an exhaustive study of the concept by analysing the main models of digital literacy in the international context in order to offer a holistic model that incorporates the contributions from all of these initiatives. The theoretical study presented herein provides an objective, rigorous perspective on the main models of development of digital literacy: the DIGCOMP Project (European Commission), the Krumsvik model (Norway), the TPACK model (USA), the JISC model (UK), the ISTE Standards (USA) and the P21 model (USA). The conclusion offers an innovative proposal of four dimensions that should define digital literacy today, taking into account the five initiatives studied, which could be very worthwhile for researchers, educators and policymakers.     

The enactment of literacy curriculum policy by early childhood teachers in two Australian schools

Since the early 2000s, literacy education has become an area of intense focus in Australian education policy, positioned to have a role in Australia's pursuit of enhanced international competitiveness in the “global knowledge economy”. Policy called for improvements in literacy outcomes, monitored by mandated annual assessments, and policy statements recognised the need to establish solid literacy foundations in early childhood to facilitate learning, and desired improvements, in later years. This article is derived from a larger study that investigated the production and enactment of literacy curriculum policy by early childhood teachers in Australian schools. It focuses on the school level within the State of Western Australia, presenting findings derived from thematic and critical discourse analysis of participant interview and documentary data collected in two case‐study schools. Comparative analysis revealed that literacy curriculum policy processes in both case‐study schools were focused on achieving improved test results in mandated testing regimes. This was impacting upon literacy curriculum in the early childhood years of schooling, in Australia deemed to involve children up to 8 years of age, in many, possibly adverse, ways. These findings may offer insights in other contexts about literacy curriculum policy processes that are focused on enhancing competitive positioning.     

In defence of writing: a social semiotic perspective on digital media,literacy and learning

From a learning perspective, social semiotics researchers tend to focus on the liberation latent in the multimedia options available through the new media. It is true that digital media democratise the possibilities open to the general public of a more varied and comprehensive text production than ever before, both in and outside school. Participating in this text production naturally implies a richer potential for learning. But digital technology also allows us to opt out of, and thus avoid, semiotic work. With this as the starting point, the present article sets out to highlight the pedagogical benefits associated with the written mode, precisely in an age when the digital media are making multimodal forms of expression increasingly available to us all.     

Toward a dialectical notion and praxis of scientific literacy

Received conceptualizations of scientific literacy are grounded in (1) the notions of ‘knowledge’, ‘concepts’, and ‘skills’ that science students have to ‘acquire’, ‘appropriate’, or ‘construct’ or (2) the notion of ‘practices’ to which they have to be ‘enculturated’ so that they become part of a ‘community of practice’. All such notions articulate scientific literacy in a static form, which does not correspond to the dynamic nature of the literacies that can be observed in society. This study proposes a dialectical notion of scientific literacy, which makes thematic its nature as a situated, distributed, collective, emergent, indeterminate, and contingent process. It articulates the idea that knowing a (scientific) language is indistinguishable from knowing one's way around the world. As a consequence, the goal of science education can no longer be to make individual students exhibit particular forms of knowledge but to provide them with contexts in which it is more important to deal with, select, and negotiate different forms of expertise and knowledgeability. This leads one to think of science education as but a part of a democratic liberal education that allows students to become competent to participate in any conversation that includes others with different forms and levels of expertise than their own.     

数字化校园对高校行政管理人员信息素质及工作伦理的影响研究

数字化校园改变了高校行政管理的模式,高校行政管理人员应建立与之相适应的新型工作伦理,具备相应的信息素质。     

The concept of the absent curriculum: the case of the Muslim contribution and the English National Curriculum for history

This paper introduces the concept of the absent curriculum on the premise that the study of curriculum has been prone to privileging curricular presence to the exclusion of curricular absence. In order to address this imbalance and to articulate a theory of absence in the curriculum, the paper applies ideas derived from the philosophy of critical realism—‘absence’ and ‘totality’—to curriculum theory to conceive of the absent curriculum. The paper outlines three components of the absent curriculum: the null curriculum at the level of national curricular policy, the unselected curriculum at the level of school curricular planning and the unenacted curriculum at the classroom level of teacher delivery. This conceptual framework is illustrated by a case example of how the absence of the history of Muslim contribution from the teaching of the National Curriculum for history in four English schools formed an absent curriculum which prompted some of the research sample of 295 British Muslim boys to disengage from their learning of history. The paper concludes that the absent curriculum is a hidden curriculum that suggests to groups whose histories are missing from the national curricula that they are relatively insignificant citizens in the community of the nation.     

Digital storytelling in adult education and family literacy: a case study from rural Ireland

Previous research on digital storytelling (DST) has focused chiefly on children and youth, but we know little about how it is used in non-formal adult education. This article analyzes a DST class in rural Ireland, which was organized by a family literacy program and offered for parents at an elementary school. Data sources included fieldnotes, interviews, and digital stories by the parents who finished the class (n?=?3). Janks's interdependence model of critical literacy is used to analyze how the class incorporated power, access, diversity, and design. The class did not engage in ideology critique or analyze the origins or consequences of dominant technologies, languages, and literacies (i.e., investigate power as domination). However, the class did provide access to technology knowledge and skills; affirm parents’ diverse knowledge, languages, life experiences, and identities; and equip participants to design and disseminate their digital stories. The study highlights possibilities for using multimodal composition in family learning and adult education.     

积极老龄化背景下老年人数字健康素养现况及对策研究

数字健康素养作为系列化获取、利用、传播、分享和创造数字健康资源的能力集,能够缓解老年人生理健康焦虑和数字技术使用焦虑。获取和使用健康信息、维持和提升健康认知、养成和强化健康行为可以优化老年人生活方式,为老年人拥有一个健康身体提供基础保障,减少老龄化带来的客观健康焦虑。同时,提升老年人健康科技产品和服务使用能力也是一种独立性和能动性的自我展示,可以打破“衰老”污名化标签带给他们的老化刻板印象,不仅有助于他们克服消极评价恐惧、缓解社会健康焦虑,还可以在社会资源循环和更新、社会参与获得和满足、社会网络稳固和延展等方面补充社会资本,助力老年人融入数字社会,享受智慧医养服务红利,弱化功能性的技术使用焦虑。     

Supporting young people with dyslexia in international schools: a case study example of current provision in Southeast Asia

This small‐scale qualitative study examines professional and parental perspectives of dyslexia within international schools located in Bangkok. The views of participants indicated that there is a need for a greater awareness of ‘dyslexia‐friendly’ approaches in these settings and a lack of resources to support the identification and teaching of individuals having specific needs. The findings also indicated that the collaboration between parents and professionals was central to what could be identified as ‘good practice’ and that the identification of difficulties alone, without the acknowledgement of an individual's strengths, could be detrimental. Opportunities for continuing professional development are highlighted as central to the needs of professionals working within this region.     

The influence of classroom disciplinary climate of schools on reading achievement: a cross-country comparative study

Despite considerable interest in research and practice in the effect of classroom disciplinary climate of schools on academic achievement, little is known about the generalizability of this effect over countries. Using hierarchical linear analyses, the present study reveals that a better classroom disciplinary climate in a school is significantly associated with better school reading performance in 53 of the 65 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 participant countries. The classroom disciplinary climate of schools can explain 11% of the between-school differences in reading achievement over countries. Controlling for economic, social, and cultural variables and student gender-related variables at student and school levels, the between-country differences in the effect of classroom disciplinary climate of schools shrank by three quarters. These findings can inform countries that face educational inequality issues (e.g., Argentina) and gender gap issues (e.g., Trinidad and Tobago), suggesting the possibility of tackling these issues via intervening on classroom disciplinary climate of schools.     

Working with students as co-researchers in schools: a matter of inclusion

The research reported in this paper focuses on the process of involving students as co-researchers in schools. The study involved a process of collaboration with two secondary schools in an economically deprived city in the north East of England. Use was made of a framework for developing inclusion that emerged through earlier work. The framework has students' voices at its centre. Through an analysis of the research process, factors that are important when involving students as co-researchers in schools are discussed. The understandings gained through the study have implications for future research. It is argued that such approaches, which place students at the heart of the research process, can be viewed as a matter of inclusion.     

Educational governance,school autonomy,and curriculum implementation: A comparative study of Arab and Jewish schools in Israel

In recent years, the predominance of the nation-state as the sole arbiter of curricular matters has eroded. New actors and organizations, especially local schools, have acquired greater discretion over the definition of school subjects and curricular emphases. This study investigates whether and how different patterns of educational governance influence the actual curriculum that local schools put into place. It is argued that uniformity/diversity in the implemented curriculum reflects macro-level factors (i.e. structural and institutional characteristics of national educational systems), and meso-level factors (i.e. community and local school characteristics). Specifically, it investigates between-school variation in curricular implementation in two major sectors of the Israeli public educational system: Jewish (secular), and Arab. School-based differences are reported in course offerings and time-allocations to subject areas in each sector. In addition, it compares actual curricular implementation in relation to official guidelines established by central authorities. Implementation patterns between and within sectors are discussed in light of educational governance differences and key macro- and local-level factors.     

The relevance of media education in primary schools in Hong Kong in the age of new media: a case study

In this age of new media, children are exposed to media messages at an early age. What can we do when the mass media exert such a great influence on children? One proposal has been for the introduction of a new school subject: media education. Though media education has not been part of the official curriculum in Hong Kong, some schools, both primary and secondary, have tried it out. This paper argues for the desirability of introducing media education in primary schools in Hong Kong, with regard to social change, recent education reform and learning initiatives of primary pupils. It then draws on the findings of a study conducted in a local primary school to examine the views of pupils, parents, and teachers on the effects on pupils of the implementation of media education lessons and campus radio projects in this age of new media.     

Towards a framework for financial literacy in the context of democracy

This paper contrasts the prevailing individualistic approach of financial literacy measurement and financial education with an educational framework that seeks to equip young people to play an active democratic role and to develop a broader understanding of the financial world. In particular, the framework suggests how important dimensions of financial literacy may be addressed in terms of the individual, the financial industry and government.