Educators generally are concerned with testing what learners know by means of written tests, as if knowledge was some intrapsychological thing or state that could be translated and externalized into some interpsychologically available inscription that is a more-or-less accurate approximation of what the person knows. In such endeavors, language is…

This paper examines the tensions created in a Greek Cypriot primary classroom between the legitimate variety of the school, Standard Modern Greek, and the home variety of the students, the Greek Cypriot Dialect. Ethnographic data are presented to indicate that language use in the classroom, contrary to what language policy-makers argue, is…

Taking broadly sociocultural or sociolinguistic perspectives, the five contributions to this special issue investigate various aspects of the co-construction of knowledge, as this is manifested in K-16 classrooms in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. While the authors of these papers address different educational settings, student…

In this paper I argue that an understanding of the role of language and literacy in learning disciplinary content should be a key component of the pedagogical content knowledge covered in the preparation of high school teachers. I identify three components of this "literacy pedagogical content knowledge" (LPCK): knowledge about how…

This paper is part of an ongoing study of discursive behaviour both at home and at school. The overall goal of the analysis presented was to explore the level of dialogicity (Linell, 1998) manifest in Israeli classrooms. This quest was motivated by a sociocultural inclination towards learning, which places instructive dialogue at the core of…

Endeavors to reassert the validity of a many-faceted agenda to which qualitative analysis of classroom talk remains central and to present a review of advances made in the gathering and interpretation of talk-evidence so that possible lines of further development can be indicated. (44 references) (Author/CK)

This paper presents a multimodal discourse analysis of children using "drill-and-practice" literacy software at a primary school in the Western Cape, South Africa. The children's interactions with the software are analysed. The software has serious limitations which arise from the global political economy of the educational software…

Focuses on the sophisticated means used by teachers to influence students to do things. The article discusses the resources available for modulation, presents the semantic continuum from subjective realizations via objective realizations to "demodalised" realizations, and applies this framework to teacher talk extracts. The article…

National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) guidance appears to characterise mathematical language as a set of specialist words with unambiguous definitions, yet analysis of the classroom transcript suggests that at least some mathematical concepts cannot be captured by such definitions. This paper explores the notion of definition within mathematics,…

This paper describes the contribution the analysis of visual design can make to a critical reading of educational texts. Drawing on recent work on visual design, the paper analyses the composition of a newspaper advertisement seeking responses to an educational report. It illustrates the way elements of composition work to present a particular…

Doctoral students' research presentations were investigated for the way in which the students articulated their rationales for data selection for their research projects. Rather than look for genre-related characteristics, though still working within the area of academic discourse (spoken), the objective of this study was to identify a set of…

This paper aims to improve the understanding of some aspects of campus life faced by a mature student and to help inform institutional strategies for enhancing student retention. The "fit" between students' production of their own identity and their perception of the successful student (both academically and socially) in their…

Explores the writing experiences of a group of Black bilingual women in a language studies course in Britain. The study focuses on how the practices surrounding dominant conventions in academic writing in higher education constrain what these women can say what they say, thus regulating their writing. (JL)

Presents an analysis of the speech practices of preschool children engaged in daily play and interactions, by adopting a perspective that recognizes young children organizing social membership through talk and activity. A reading based on traditional early childhood practices is contrasted with an alternative reading showing children constructing…

Identifies the features of effective educational talk, using contextual differences between educational and social settings as starting points for the examination of students' seminar discourse, videotaped during a study of small-group classroom discussions in the United Kingdom. Findings reveal that these features include an appreciation of the…