Moving on: The challenges for foreign language learning on transition from primary to secondary school

Europe's commitment to language learning has resulted in higher percentages of pupils studying foreign languages during primary education. In England, recent policy decisions to expand foreign language learning at primary level by 2010 create major implications for transition to secondary. This paper presents findings on transition issues from case studies of a DfES-funded project evaluating 19 local authority Pathfinders piloting the introduction of foreign language learning at primary level. Research on transition in other countries sets these findings in context. Finally, it investigates the challenges England faces for transition in the light of this expansion and discusses future implications.     

A generational examination of instructional Facebook use and the effects on perceived instructor immediacy,credibility and student affective learning

This study examined Millennial student perceptions of use of social networking, specifically Facebook, by instructors. Two independent variables were examined: instructor age (Baby Boomer or Millennial) and use of Facebook (utilising a course group site through the service versus not using the service at all). Results revealed that Baby Boomer instructors who used a class Facebook group were rated more highly on mediated immediacy, credibility and affective learning than Baby Boomer or Millennial instructors who did not use Facebook. The role of expectancy violations theory in Millennials’ perceptions of their instructors’ communication is discussed and recommendations are made for future research.     

Classroom Competencies and Marginal Positionings

In this paper we examine the way students are positioned in classrooms in terms of the binary power/powerlessness and its relation to other binaries such as teacher/student, white/black and competent/incompetent student. We show how those positioned in the marked non‐ascendant pair of each binary are assumed, from the perspective of ‘teaching‐as‐usual’ to be choosing (irrationally) their lesser status. We show how this can be read quite differently from a poststructuralist perspective and how such a reading makes visible the ways in which power and ascendant positionings are discursively achieved not only as ‘normal’ but as the way things really are and should be. It further makes visible the ways in which such discursive achievements are dependent on those who are positioned as the necessary other/outsider to the ascendant order.