Texts in context: mapping out the gender differentiation of the reading curriculum

This article draws on data collected as part of the Fact and Fiction Research Project, based at the Centre for Language in Education, Southampton University and funded by the ESRC 1996-98. The project was set up to explore the gender differentiation of reading in the primary years, in the light of boys' under-achievement in English. It focused on the 7-9-year age group, as this is where children begin to develop as independent readers, and concentrated on their use of fact and fiction texts in different social settings. Data was collected in four different primary schools, chosen to reflect contrasts in the social background of their intake. The article has two main aims: (i) to provide analytic tools for tracking variation in literacy practices across sites through a systematic focus on the elements present within particular literacy events; and (ii) to show the relevance of this approach to understanding gender differentiation within the literacy curriculum and its consequent impact on levels of achievement.     

Curriculum, literacy and the state: re 'right'-ing english?

There are signs that English teaching - for much of the century absolutely central to the literacy project of State-sponsored schooling - may be in decline. This is something that can only become apparent in the course of history, as the new century generates its own distinctive educational forms and practices. Certainly, 'English' will continue to be taught and studied in the foreseeable future, with the English subjects remaining a significant part of the formal school curriculum. However, perhaps we are witnessing a major shift in what might be called the educational capital of English teaching and, hence, the effective, although always pending, end of the English 'empire'. This article addresses such issues and debates in the context of national and international shifts and movements in educational policy and curriculum politics, in relation to the wider Australian context of the 1990s.     

Looking inside the Russian doll: the interconnections between context, learning and pedagogy in the workplace

There is now much awareness of the symbiotic relationship between workplace learning, the organisation of work, level of employee involvement, organisational performance, and the broader economic, regulatory, and social context within which organisations have to operate. This article argues that we have to identify and take serious account of the contextual factors (external and internal) that affect all organisations, as these are central to developing our understanding of the nature of pedagogical practice within any workplace setting. By closely examining the nature and impact of these contextual factors, we can gain greater insight into the phenomenon of why organisations adopt different practices and why they create such different learning environments. The article draws on emerging findings from an ESRC-funded multisector study in the UK and uses illustrations from two contrasting sectors to highlight the impact of context on pedagogical practice.     

Pedagogy, observation and the construction of learning disabilities

In recent years there has been a growing awareness of the ways in which disabilities are socially constructed. This article examines specifically the ways in which pedagogy underpins the identification of students as having learning disabilities. Data were collected in a classroom in Queensland, Australia, and consisted of student and teacher interviews and classroom observation. Analyses explored the ways in which classroom practice structured who is identified as having learning disabilities and why this decision is made. The authors found that pedagogy was critical to teacher decisions about learning disabilities. Pedagogical practices impacted on what and how students learned about literacy. Pedagogy also shaped teacher opportunities to observe student understanding about literacy. These opportunities to observe student understanding were critical in the identification of learning disabilities. For example, the teacher predominantly utilised a question-answer form of pedagogy that often became a 'guessing-game' in which the students' task was to guess what the teacher had in mind. It appeared that students who were most proficient at reading subtle nonverbal teacher cues were most successful at answering these questions and students who could not read teacher cues had difficulty. Question-answer sequences were one of the primary sources of information the teacher had about students' literacy knowledge. The other source of information was a seatwork activity that followed the dialogue segment of the lesson. This activity primarily consisted of cutting and pasting or writing small sections of text. It is suggested that these components of the lesson were the main basis on which the teacher made judgements about who had learning disabilities. The classroom pedagogy played a fundamental role in guiding what the teacher observed as relevant in the students' performance and through this, defining who was considered competent and who was identified as having learning disabilities.     

Ethnography for classrooms: constructing a reflective curriculum for literacy

This article discusses the possibilities for using ethnographic methods as part of the literacy curriculum at all levels of the education system. It presents a view of ethnography as a research approach with potential as a learning resource, encouraging reflection and theorizing about literacy in which teachers and students can engage together. It draws on experiences from further and adult education, higher education and professional development courses, and family literacy programmes, as well as school-based learning.     

Reflexivity, community and education for the learning society

In this article it is argued that the idea of a learning society is consonant with developments in the social world conceived as part of the ongoing project of reflexive modernity. This project is characterised by a dynamic process of individualisation which on the one hand results in widening opportunities for self-creation and the construction of democratic, flexible communities, but on the other is associated with new kinds of structures and cultural processes which continue to reproduce inequality whilst failing to counter the tendency to fragmentation. The idea of a learning society is a response to the dilemmas of these 'new times'. The New Right idea of such a society is reviewed and found wanting; the particular mix of neo-liberal free market ideas and neo-conservative authoritarianism just cannot deliver the flexibility, diversity and scope for reflexivity required at the level of the self or the community. It is then argued that the most appropriate conception of the learning society is that which grasps the nettle of individualism whilst at the same time deploying an understanding of the self as constituted in practices - a model which avoids the conceptual split between the individual and society and captures the duality of persons as individuals and as members of communities. An attempt is then made to outline a curricular and pedagogical strategy appropriate for a democratic version of the learning society. This involves two aspects: first a teaching approach which focuses on the nature of commitment to and participation in reflexive communities and second, one that fosters the kind of self-reflexivity and self-knowledge required for individuals to sustain and develop their self identities in the circumstances of reflexive modernity.     

Classroom management and disaffection

This article reports on aspects of the Norwich Area Schools Consortium (NASC) cross-school Classroom Management and Disaffection research project undertaken as part of the NASC programme. It documents the dual interwoven 'stories' of teacher engagement in research as a learning expand the substantive research undertaken. The project took place in two stages, the focus of the second stage emerging from the analysis of the first stage. Research into both pupil and teacher perceptions concerning disaffection and classroom management was investigated in the first stage. The second stage attempted to unravel the complex relationships between disaffection, curriculum, pedagogy and context from pupil perspectives, with insights on the relationship between a good lesson and a good teacher being of particular interest. A full report on the NASC Classroom Management and Disaffection research is available from the authors.     

Literacies and new technologies in school settings

This article introduces some concepts for thinking about issues and practices associated with 'technologising literacy education' under current and foreseeable conditions of schooling. It provides and analyses 'snapshots' of classroom activities involving the use of new technologies in literacy education within three sites, and describes four principles for guiding further developments in technologising classrooms: 'teachers first', 'complementarity', 'workability' and 'equity'. The argument focuses particularly on analysing the kinds of things being done in the classrooms. It draws on three related distinctions advanced by John Perry Barlow, which contrast competing mindsets. We refer to these as the mindsets of 'insiders' and 'outsider-newcomers' to cyberspace, respectively, and show how the four principles are read differently by the two mind-sets. This reveals limitations we believe are inherent in these principles insofar as they are approached from the standpoint of current systemic assumptions - which can be seen as the mind-set of the 'outsider-newcomers'.     

Engaging teachers in research: teacher engagement in research as professional development

This article is one of three in this issue that focuses on teacher engagement in and with research as professional development. In particular, it explores the changes in learning that occurred as the Norwich Area Schools Consortium (NASC) programme developed and shifted its emphasis from the individual school-based research projects undertaken in the first phase of the programme to the cross-school university-based research projects carried out in the second phase. A change in project management occurred as a consequence of the move into the second phase, thus offering different opportunities and dilemmas for teacher professional development through engagement in research. These are outlined and discussed in the article.     

A multimodal perspective on textuality and contexts

Textuality is often thought of in linguistic terms; for instance, the talk and writing that circulate in the classroom. In this paper I take a multimodal perspective on textuality and context. I draw on illustrative examples from school Science and English to examine how image, colour, gesture, gaze, posture and movement—as well as writing and speech—are mobilized and orchestrated by teachers and students, and how this shapes learning contexts. Throughout the paper I discuss the issues raised by a multimodal perspective for the conceptualization of text and learning context, and how this approach can contribute to learning and pedagogy more generally. I suggest that attending to the full ensemble of communicative modes involved in learning contexts enables a richer view of the complex ways in which curriculum knowledge (and policy) is mediated and articulated through classroom practices.     

Literacies and libraries: archives and cybraries

As spatial repositories of the selective traditions of dominant and marginalised, residual and emergent cultures, libraries remain key elements in the educational production and reproduction of knowledge and power. As institutions fundamental to the project of modernity, as working shrines for those canonical texts of modernity - the dictionary and the encyclopaedia - libraries are sites par excellence for applications of the new literacies. This article aims to redress their omission from the literature on literacy and education. Following a critique of current definitions of information literacy, we argue for a critical information literacy for navigation through textual and ideological complexity and, diversity, ambiguity and multiplicity.     

Participatory practices at work

This article discusses workplace participatory practices: the reciprocal process of engaging in and learning through work. The reciprocity between the affordance of the workplace (its invitational qualities) and individuals' engagement in the workplace is proposed as a means of understanding how learning through work proceeds. How workplaces invite individuals or cohorts of individuals to participate in and learn through work can be understood in terms of how they are afforded opportunities to engage in activities and interactions that are central to the values and practices (i.e. continuity) of the work practice. These affordances are shaped by workplace norms, practices and affiliations (e.g. cliques, associations, occupational groupings, employment status) and are often characterised by contestation and inequitable distribution. Access to opportunities for practice, and therefore learning, is directed towards sustaining the work practice and/or the interests of particular individuals and groups. Nevertheless, how individuals engage in and learn from work is also shaped by their agencies, which are a product of their values, subjectivities and identities. These reciprocal processes of participation in workplaces are illuminated through an analysis of the micro-social processes that shape the participatory practices of three workers over a six-month period: a union worker, a grief counsellor and a school-based information technology consultant. The findings illuminate the bases for participation, performance and learning for each of the three workers.     

Teachers and productive pedagogies: contextualising, conceptualising, utilising

Improving students' outcomes from schooling requires schools to be learning organisations, where both students and teachers are engaged in learning. As such, knowledge and talk about pedagogy need to be at the core of the professional culture of schools. This article argues that this will require the valuing of teachers' work, that is, their pedagogical practices, to be a central focus of educational policy. Dangers are associated with this argument in terms of understating the impacts of poverty, lack of funding to disadvantaged schools and other social factors such as the pressures of globalisation upon students' educational opportunities. Hence, while acknowledging the importance of pedagogy to students' outcomes, the article contextualises the argument through a recognition of the policy and structural conditions that work against the valuing of teachers and their work. It then conceptualises how, within this context, a focus on pedagogies can make a difference to students' academic and social outcomes from schooling. This conceptualisation utilises the productive pedagogies model of classroom practice, developed in a large Australian study of school reform, as an example of the forms of pedagogical practices that support students' achievement of academic and social outcomes. It is argued that such pedagogical practices ought to be a concern of teachers, school administrators, education systems and local communities interested in schools as learning organisations.     

The work ethic, the school curriculum and education for democracy

The main purpose of this article is to explore some of the ways we need to think about work if we are to teach it as a •'good' for the self and society. The social, cultural, technological and economic developments of •'new times' have led to enormous changes in the kind of work people do and this has given rise to opportunities for a new relationship between the self, work and society, which can be culturally enriching for self and community, but which also carries with it certain dangers. To begin with, the work ethic and some of the ideas associated with it will be explicated with a brief reference to its historical origins and the interpretations of various social analysts, in particular those of John Dewey. The author then goes on to examine the ways in which these ideas might be applied to teaching and learning about work in a school context. This will involve looking at the informal and the formal level of the curriculum, and addressing questions to do with the way we expose pupils to various meanings of work, what it means to do •'good' work and what alternative teaching approaches might be envisaged.     

Danish stable schools for experiential common learning in groups of organic dairy farmers

The farmer field school (FFS) is a concept for farmers’ learning, knowledge exchange, and empowerment that has been developed and used in developing countries. In Denmark, a research project focusing on explicit non-antibiotic strategies involves farmers who have actively expressed an interest in phasing out antibiotics from their herds through promotion of animal health. One way of reaching this goal was to form participatory focused farmer groups in an FFS approach, which was adapted to Danish conditions and named “stable schools.” Four stable schools were established and went through a 1-yr cycle with 2 visits at each of the 5 or 6 farms connected to each group. A facilitator was connected to each group whose role was to write the meeting agenda together with the host farmer, direct the meeting, and write the minutes to send to the group members after the meeting. Through group focus interviews and individual semistructured qualitative interviews of all participants, the approach of the farmers’ goal-directed work toward a common goal was judged to be very valuable and fruitful and based on a common learning process. Complex farming situations were the focus of all groups and in this context, problems were identified and solutions proposed based on each farmer's individual goals. In this article, we describe the experiences of 4 stable school groups (each comprising farmers and a facilitator), and the common process of building a concept that is suitable for Danish organic dairy farming.     

媒介市场化运营与公务员媒介素养的重构

公务员的媒介素养,主要来自其对新闻媒体属性与社会功能的现实体认。当媒体主要体现为意识形态的推进工具时,公务员的媒介素养呈现为以意识形态为主导的单一结构;当媒体双重属性被认同后,媒介素养则是兼顾信息属性、政治属性与经济属性的复合型结构。目前我国公务员媒介素养正由单一型结构向复合型结构过渡,许多问题由此而来。这种过渡与媒介素养重构从三个方面可见。     

Potato glycoalkaloids: formation and strategies for mitigation

With the increasing production and consumption of potato and its products, glycoalkaloid (GA) formation and toxicity are likely to become an important focus for food safety researchers and public health agencies. Not only the presence of GA, particularly in the form of α‐solanine and α‐chaconine, but also the changes occurring as a result of various post‐harvest handling practices and storage, are critical issues influencing the quality of stored potatoes. Studies on various factors (pre‐harvest, during harvest and post‐harvest) affecting GA have been carried out from time to time, but it is difficult to compare the results of one study with another due to wide variation in the parameters chosen. This review aims to develop a clear understanding of these issues. Published information on the types of GA, their effects on health, their typical concentrations in potatoes, their formation mechanisms, and how their levels can be controlled by following appropriate post harvest practices and storage regimes are critically analysed. The levels of GA in potato can be controlled effectively by adopting appropriate post‐harvest practices. Further studies are necessary, however, to investigate best practices, which either check completely or retard substantially their formation. Copyright © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry     

认知语境与英语词汇学习的相关性

作为认知语言学中的一个概念,认知语境是内化于大脑中的一系列语境因素,它被认为是一种心理结构体。认知语境呈动态而非静态状,这点与传统语境不同。认知语境反映了交际双方的心理状态,也决定了交际能否成功。词汇是英语的基本要素之一,是语言学习的核心部分,同时又是大学英语中的一个学习障碍。了解认知语境与词汇之间的相关性,将有助于学生改进词汇学习策略。     

Reforming textbooks, reshaping school knowledge: Taiwan's textbook deregulation in the 1990s1

This article examines the political and ideological complexities of deregulating national standardised textbooks within the context of state transformation in Taiwan, from 1989 to 2001. It analyses how discourses were constructed, how actions were adopted by the state and opposition forces, and how these reform practices were gradually incorporated into the state-led textbook deregulation project. The analysis concludes that the interplay of decentralisation, liberalisation and nativisation has profoundly affected power relations in schools, the form of textbook publication, and the principle of curriculum organisation during the transition towards market-driven textbook production. It suggests that although the discourse of deregulation often refers to democracy, it may become part of the legitimation needs of the state.