Studying Headteachers' Professional Lives: Getting the life history

In order to obtain a better understanding of how headteachers frame their professional lives, a comparative project was set up with a life history approach. A series of open-ended interviews were conducted where headteachers talked about themselves, their work, background, experiences and career. The article focuses on the modes of inquiry used in the study and explores alternative approaches to analysis, especially of content and form. Several methodological issues are discussed, for instance the production of data as an interactive and collaborative process of creating meaning, the central role of the research relations, dialogical analysis and how to move from separate individual stories to an analysis of headteachers' lives across different countries. As the analysis has unfolded, new questions have been posed about the comparative aspect of the project. At the beginning, cross-national similarities and differences were relatively straightforward and were found in the content of interviews. Since then, explorations of the form and structure of the stories have raised more complex juxtapositions. More recently, new questions have begun to emerge, such as about the nature and meanings of 'professional confidence' and its relationship to external accountability in national contexts.     

The Populist Chameleon: The People's Party,Huey Long,George Wallace,and the Populist Argumentative Frame

This essay argues that a sustained form can be located in the complicated history of populist rhetoric. Despite its chameleonic qualities, the advancement of populism is constituted by alterations in the focus and content, not the structure, of populist activism. This structure, or what I term its argumentative frame, positions a virtuous people against a powerful enemy and expresses disdain toward traditional forms of democratic deliberation and republican representation. I trace these themes through the rhetoric of the People's Party, Huey Long, and George Wallace. I conclude by analyzing the link between populism's persistence in U.S. history and the nation's Founding.     

Preparing literary material for public utterance

This essay claims that arguments about the genres of discourse contain as a crucial element an attribution of status, which involves a dialectic of authority and marginality. Rhetorical scholarship is often a reaction against the condition of marginality. Reflection on these matters illumines the ontology of rhetorical discourse.     

The Monster Within: How Male Serial Killers Discursively Manage Their Stigmatized Identities

Investigations of identity management regarding serial killers are sparse and rarely account for the communal discourse surrounding serial homicide. Such studies are essential to understanding the intersections of stigma and identity, particularly for the exploration of reframing that is severely limited for deviant populations. This interpretive study examined 13 interviews with serial killers to explore stigmatized identity management. The analysis revealed that male serial killers rejected their stigmatized identity by indicating a lack of control over their non-normal behavior or by justifying their actions. They also indicated that societal influences, such as previous traumatic experiences and communal discourse surrounding serial killing, influenced their identity management.     

A Fish Out of Water: New Articulations of U.S.–Latino Identity on Ugly Betty

This essay examines representations of U.S.–Latino identity on the ABC television program Ugly Betty. The analysis argues that the show articulates a tension between ethnic “otherness” and cultural assimilation that symbolizes current negotiations of individual and collective identities among young, English-speaking Latinos in the United States. Furthermore, the essay argues that Ugly Betty symbolically endorses a new conceptualization of Latino identity in the United States. The conceptual framework of the analysis is the relationship between media representation and identity.     

“Wearing a mask” vs. connecting identity with learning

Contemporary insights regarding identity emphasize its situated, negotiated nature (i.e., identity is shaped by – and shapes in response – the contexts in which it is formed;  and ) Recent work also suggests that this identity/context intersection holds powerful implications regarding engagement in learning (Brophy, 2008). This pair of qualitative studies drew from contemporary models connecting learning with identity (Study 1: cultural modeling, Lee, 2007 and third-space/hybrid-identities, Gutiérrez, 2008; Study 2: Kids’ business inquiry projects, Fairbanks, 2000) to explore the nature and impact of such connections among disaffected ninth-grade English students at a high-needs school. Results demonstrate evidence of: (1) a significant connection between identity and learning; (2) students’ negotiation of engaged patterns of participation; (3) the relevance of student voice to this process; and (4) the impact of connections between identity and learning on students’ participation in, and affective response to, learning.     

Reading The Waterfall as a Female Bildungsroman

British novelist Margaret Drabble’s The Waterfall can be interpreted as a female Bildungsroman. This essay attempts to explore how the protagonist’s identity problem is finally resolved through the analysis of the characteristics and elements of female Bildungsroman as reflected in TheWaterfall.     

在历史与传说之间——以何文渊传说为例

明代温州知府何文渊是一位能臣、清官,但在温州民间传说中却被丑化为一个心胸狭隘、凶狠毒辣的封建官吏。历史与传说之间呈现出一道扑朔迷离的鸿沟。通过大传统与小传统的互动关系,运用族群认同以及历史记忆等相关理论,解读何文渊传说,探讨历史与传说的关系。研究表明:何文渊传说是明清以降温州人族群认同的形象表述,是温州民众对当地历史的集体记忆。中国传统社会里知识精英和普通民众之间的思想互动,使中国文化具有历史与民俗传统交融的特质。     

Reflection through assessment: A systematic narrative review of teacher feedback and student self-perception

Beginning with two important meta-analyses by Hattie and Timperley (2007) and Shute (2008), the relationship between teacher feedback and student self-perception has received more attention. One way students enact a self-perception is by reflectively writing about their participation within a particular field of study. The current review analyzes how teacher feedback facilitates and supports the formation of self-perception made visible in students’ reflective writing. The following electronic databases were searched up to February 2018: CINAHL, Academic Search Complete, PsycINFO, ERIC, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and Google Scholar. Five themes in total were constructed. These themes indicate contexts when feedback might lead to students reflecting through writing on a self-perception. Features of feedback that most likely promote this kind of reflection can be described as: content situated, dialogic, and empathic. As a secondary category of themes, feedback should position students as: fluid and/or vulnerable.