Researching without representation? Language and materiality in post-qualitative methodology

The article imagines a materially informed post-qualitative research. Focusing upon issues of language and representation, under the influence of Deleuze’s Logic of Sense, it argues for research practices capable of engaging the materiality of language itself. It proposes the development of non- or post-representational research practices, drawing on contemporary materialist work that rejects the static, hierarchical logic of representation, and practices such as interpretation and analysis as conventionally understood. The article explores the ontological and the practical implications of this state of affairs, via a re-reading of a fragment of what would have been called data. Offering relief from the ressentiment and piety that have characterised qualitative methodologists’ engagements with scientific method, the ‘post’ could therefore be read as signalling the demise of qualitative research. Or at least, as inaugurating a qualitative research that would be unrepresentable to itself.     

Fine Motor Control Underlies the Association Between Response Inhibition and Drawing Skill in Early Development

Previous research shows that the development of response inhibition and drawing skill are linked. The current research investigated whether this association reflects a more fundamental link between response inhibition and motor control. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-olds (n = 100) were tested on measures of inhibition, fine motor control, and drawing skill. Data revealed an association between inhibition and fine motor control, which was responsible for most of the association observed with drawing skill. Experiment 2 (n = 100) provided evidence that, unlike fine motor control, gross motor control and inhibition were not associated (after controlling for IQ). Alternative explanations for the link between inhibition and fine motor control are outlined, including a consideration of how these cognitive processes may interact during development.     

Images as orienting activity: using theory to inform classroom practices

Conceptualizations of teacher knowledge have shifted to focusing on the role of experiential rather than theoretical knowledge. There are different approaches to this, but the idea of an image that guides practice is widespread. One approach to images that has not been frequently investigated in studies of second language teachers is through sociocultural theory, specifically in the contribution of activity theory known as orienting activity. In this view, images mediate teaching actions by linking theoretical knowledge and practical experience. This article will use orienting activity to examine the role that images play in an English as a second language teacher’s personal practical knowledge by drawing on classroom observations, informal discussions, simulated recall interviews and documentary evidence collected over a nine month period. Analysis of the data shows that several key images mediated the teacher’s classroom actions. These emerged in the observations and in the teacher’s commentary on planned and spontaneous, routine and novel and successful and unsuccessful activities. The images appeared to have developed through both tacit knowledge associated with practical experience and theoretical knowledge associated with research and theory. This demonstrates the usefulness of orienting activity as a theoretical framework for exploring classroom practices and teacher development through the links it can make between theory and practice.     

Responding to children's drawings

This article aims to explore the issues that face primary school teachers when responding to children's drawings. Assessment in art and design is an ongoing concern for teachers with limited experience and confidence in the area and, although children's drawings continue to be a focus of much research, the question of what it is that teachers say to young children that has a positive impact on the development of their drawing is under-explored. The article aims to identify the components of what constitutes children's competence in observational drawing through a detailed analysis of a drawing made by a 6-year-old child. Connections between the teaching of drawing and the teaching of literacy are highlighted, and the article concludes that children who are able make confident representations of the visual world are better placed to express their own ideas, thoughts and experiences through art.     

汇编语言和C语言在图形处理中的综合应用

随着计算机与各相关学科的交叉促进,计算机图形在各领域的应用越来越广泛。计算机图形的广泛应用对图形的处理技术提出更高的要求,尤其是在存取效率与质量方面。C语言提供了丰富的图形函数且开发效率高;但在要求执行速度快,占用空间少或要求直接控制硬件的场合,汇编语言就可以提高程序的运行效率。充分发挥两种语言的优点,实现两种语言之间的混合编程,是解决问题的有效方法。本文以画直线为例,讨论汇编语言与C语言在图形处理过程中的综合应用技术。     

Almost 30 Years of Writing Research: Making Sense of It All with The Wrath of Khan

In this invited article, we present an ongoing research program in the area of writing. Although this program has focused on students with learning disabilities (LD) and other struggling writers, it has also concentrated more broadly on issues involving writing development and general writing instruction. One purpose of this review was to share our basic findings in each of these areas, as they have important implications for teaching writing to students with LD. Another purpose was to illustrate how an ongoing research program develops and grows over time. To make this process more concrete, we employed several different literacy devices, including drawing an analogy between the development of our research program and the development of the story line for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Our final purpose was to describe the research we plan to do in the near future.     

Through Language the Child Moves from Looking to Seeing: Action research into language as a tool to teach drawing

This article is prompted by Fielding's research (1994) into Vygotsky's theories (1986), and his request ‘to seek to establish a relationship between language and drawing’, in particular his citing that Harris ‘... calls for further research to be undertaken with a view to determining whether or not there is a direct and necessary relationship between the two human abilities’ (1963, p. 191).

The article reports on classroom action research, carried out at the University of Liverpool, England, by primary, Post Graduate Certificate of Education students, into three different strategies to teach primary children drawing, one of which employed language. This approach has been developed over a number of years. The data arising from the students research has provided powerful insights into the characteristics of language strategies which most successfully promote learning in children.     

Memorisation methods in science education: tactics to improve the teaching and learning practice

How can science teachers support students in developing an appropriate declarative knowledge base for solving problems? This article focuses on the question whether the development of students’ memory of scientific propositions is better served by writing propositions down on paper or by making drawings of propositions either by silent or muttering rehearsal. By means of a memorisation experiment with eighth- and ninth-grade students, we answer this question. In this experiment, students received instruction to memorise nine science propositions and to reproduce them afterwards. To support memorisation students were randomly assigned either to a group that received instruction to write each proposition on paper or to a group that received instruction to make a drawing about the content of the proposition. In addition, half of the students in both groups received instruction to mutter and the other half of them received instruction to write or draw in silence. The main conclusion from the experiment is that after four weeks students who had made a drawing remembered significantly more propositions than those who had memorised the propositions by writing them down. Our research further revealed that it did not matter whether students muttered or memorised silently.     

试析逻辑原子主义的图像论

逻辑原子主义认为，命题是实在或事态的图像：原子命题是原子事实的、分子命题是复杂事实的、语言则是世界的总图像。自然语言具有歧异性和模糊性，因此必须构造一种理想语言才能建立对世界的图像关系．但是图像论遇到难以克服的理论困难，这些困难是由图像论本身的理论缺陷导致的。     

Rural Neighborhood Context,Child Care Quality,and Relationship to Early Language Development

Research Findings: Prior research with older urban children indicates that a disadvantaged neighborhood context is associated with poorer early development, including poorer verbal ability, reading recognition, and achievement scores among children. Neighborhood disadvantage in rural communities and at younger age levels may also be related to development; however, this relationship has received little examination. In this study we utilized data from the Family Life Project, a representative sample of babies born to mothers in poor rural counties in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, to address questions related to the relationship between neighborhood context (disadvantage and safety) and children's early language development. We examined the mediation of this relationship by child care quality. We also examined geographic isolation and collective socialization as moderators of the relationship between neighborhood context and child care quality. Results indicated that although neighborhood disadvantage did not predict children's development or child care quality, neighborhood safety predicted children's receptive language, with child care quality a partial mediator of this relationship. Collective socialization but not geographic isolation moderated the relationship between neighborhood safety and child care quality. Practice or Policy: Implications for policy, practice, and future research are discussed, including improving community safety through community policing, neighborhood watch, and social networks and increasing access to quality child care.     

The Relationship Between Children's Drawings of Rectangular Solids from Memory and Performance in Cognitive Tests,Art and Practical Subjects

A total of 127 11 + and 81 12 + subjects drew rectangular solids from memory, after viewing them from different positions. The results were correlated with IQ, vocabulary, verbal judgement and reasoning, and a spatial test with assessment in art and crafts. Unexpectedly high and significant correlations were yielded between drawing solids and cognitive tests involving verbal ability, when compared with correlations between solids, the spatial test and craft subjects, especially for the 12 + group. This appeared contrary to received views on the association of aptitude in drawing with spatial ability. Furthermore, as spatial factors are considered to underpin drawing and craft subjects, a closer association between these, rather than between drawing and verbal ability, was expected. This outcome raised certain theoretical questions concerning drawing and its interaction with perception, language, memory and intellectual development.     

Communication apprehension in a first language and self‐perceived competence as predictors of communication apprehension in a second language: A study of speakers of English as a second language

This study addresses the communication apprehension of the non‐native English speaker in the U.S. Previous studies which have examined the implications of communication apprehension (CA) for bilingual, non‐native communicators have generated results which indicate that trait‐like CA is consistent across first and second language‐speaking situations. However, none of these studies have probed the cause of the cross‐linguistic consistency of CA. This research is designed to provide a scientific explanation for the etiology of CA by applying the communibiological paradigm to CA theory and research. By selecting the situational constraints of international students, this study tests a theory based on proposition 4 of the communibiological paradigm (Beatty & McCroskey w/Valencic, 2001, p. 128): “Environment or ‘situation’ has only a negligible effect on interpersonal behavior.” The results of this study replicate the strong relationship previously observed between CA in a first language and CA in a second language. It also found that the genetic markers employed (Eysenck's Big 3 temperament variables) predicted first and second language CA approximately equally. The results indicate that, although both first and second languages are learned, the CA associated with them most likely is not.     

中国英语教学与研究的新构架：感知、实践与范式

本文通过对英语教学与研究相关文献的审视,指出了当前中国英语教学与研究所存在的误区,即忽视或摒弃自身语言文化和身份特性。在教学中,刻意模仿第一语言英语,试图达到英语为母语说话者准确、流利、自如地使用英语的程度。在科研中,一味效仿西方英语研究模式,其关注点往往是有待完善的学生英语。与此同时,本文结合中国英语教学与实践的现状,对中国式英语进行反思,在此基础上,对中国式英语重新定义。运用传统的中国儒学原理,并融入相应的西方学习理论和语言学习理论,笔者提出了全新的中国式英语教学模式,旨在于帮助中国英语学习者在本土化双语学习语境中更有效地掌握和运用语言知识,提高语言能力,达到最大的学习效果。更重要的是,以儒学原理为指导的教学模式,将使我们在教学和科研过程中进一步完善自我,不失民族及文化特征,对学生和教师都提出了一个明确可达到的学习和培养目标。     

Language,discipline and ‘teaching like a champion’

This article presents an analysis of various language policy mechanisms currently circulating in secondary schools in England, with a particular focus on those that intermingle ‘language’, ‘standard English’ and ‘discipline’. Although the connections between language, ideology and behaviour are well established within critical educational linguistics, this has not been explored in relation to current education policy in England, which is characterised by an overt focus on standardised English and behaviour ‘management’. In a grounded approach, I explore how the disciplining of language correlates with the disciplining of the body, based on ethnographic-orientated fieldwork undertaken in a London secondary school and drawing on a broad range of policy mechanisms such as curricula, textbooks, classroom artefacts and Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion industry. I show how the current linguistic conservatism found within government policy gets reproduced in school-level policies, pedagogies and classroom interactions, and highlight these relations within a network of policy actors and key terms associated with so-called ‘zero-tolerance’ and ‘no-excuses’ schools. I show how teachers are positioned as language policy managers who work within a system of surveillance, compliance, coercion and control. As such, this article contributes to current thinking within critical language policy and the sociology of education by offering an expanded view of language ideologies in schools, whereby connections between language and discipline are explicitly illustrated and critiqued.     

Power relations in the enactment of English language education policy for Chinese schools

The scale of English language education in China is astounding, but recent research has shown that the latest national English education policy for Chinese schools has not been implemented successfully due to various reasons. One reason given for the lack of success is the impracticability of the top-down policy itself excluding teachers’ involvement and neglecting the contextual constraints. Building on the theoretical framework of multi-levelled actors in language planning and language policy, and drawing on some key concepts in relation to power in Critical Language Policy research, this paper explores how a national English language curriculum that emphasizes the international standards and norms in curriculum design has been enacted, ineffectively, by the key stakeholders through analysing the specific roles of three groups of key stakeholders involved in the English as a foreign language curriculum policy implementation.     

When Adolescents Represent the Third Dimension: Three Case Studies

The main focus of this article is the representation of the third dimension. The sample is sixty adolescent 14‐year‐olds. Our research is concerned with the study of the drawings of the same array of 3D objects in three cases: the representation of 3D objects without the presence of models (through verbal instructions), by observation of physical models, and by observation of their digital models on a computer screen. The study examines the drawing techniques applied by adolescents to represent the 3rd dimension and the impact of the model (3D physical or digital model) in the drawing outcome. A comparison study of the three kinds of drawings of the same array of objects showed that 14‐year‐old children face serious difficulties in depicting the third dimension in the absence of a model, using mainly a mixture of drawing devices typical of earlier stages, according to theories of drawing development. On the other hand, when drawing from observation, the nature of the model seems to play an important role in the drawing outcome, with a clear superiority in performance when the model is digital. The findings of this study suggest that the more extended use of 3D models, either physical or digital, could help the better understanding of spatial relationships and evoke the use of more advanced drawing techniques for the depiction of 3D layouts. The study also suggests that a better understanding of the nature of graphic development in adolescence is essential for many areas of the curriculum.     

Using the known to chart the unknown: A review of first-language influence on the development of English-as-a-second-language spelling skill

Currently, there is a practical demand and necessity for research on how English-as-a-second language (ESL) learners acquire literacy skills, such as spelling. One important issue of this research agenda is how ESL learners apply first-language knowledge to learning to spell in English. Twenty-seven studies were reviewed that investigated the influence of the first language on ESL learners’ development of English spelling skill. Evidence was found for both positive and negative transfer of first-language knowledge and processes to ESL learners’ English spelling. These results are in agreement with theoretical propositions about the interdependence between first- and second-language academic skills [e.g., Cummins, J. (1981). In California State Department of Education (Ed.), Schooling and language minority students: A theoretical framework (pp. 3–49). Los Angeles: Evaluation, Dissemination, and Assessment Center, California State University, Los Angeles]. The findings are discussed in relation to the ESL learner’s first-language proficiency level and distance between first language and English. Comparisons are drawn between ESL learners’ and English monolinguals’ spelling development and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Power Drawing

Power Drawing is the education programme of the Campaign for Drawing initiated by the Guild of St George. Primarily a research and development programme, it focuses on drawing in schools and other educational settings and investigates how the use of drawing can help children and young people learn in a variety of subjects. The intention is to develop a range of strategies, methods and techniques to support learning through drawing. This paper explains the ideas underpinning the programme, how it is organised and the research methods used. It describes and reflects on the experience of the first year of the action research, and comments on some of the satisfactions and tensions that have emerged. It outlines how these will influence further development.     

论克里普克的先验偶然命题和后验必然命题

克里普克关于先验偶然命题和后验必然命题的观点，是对蒯因关于分析命题和综合命题的观点的进一步推进和具体化，克里普克的先验偶然命题是在特定语言系统之内做出的关于语言系统之外的陈述，这从逻辑上说是不恰当的，他对后验必然命题的论证立足于某一语言系统，但得出了超越该语言系统的结论，这在逻辑上也是不合理的。