This study examines the limitations and ableist assumptions embedded in quantitative survey instruments used to gather data on postsecondary students with disabilities. Specifically, three National Center for Educational Statistics postsecondary surveys were examined as data sources. Employing a critical disability studies lens and discourse…

In this paper, we present the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) for the reliable detection of metaphoric language that may be interpreted using extant vocational psychology theory. Metaphors are ubiquitous in communication and carry influential meaning for people. To illustrate MIPVU, we use transcripts of interviews…

Evaluation in higher education is an evolving social practice; that is, it involves what people, institutions and broader systems do and say, how they do and say it, what they value, the effects of these practices and values, and how meanings are ascribed. The textual products (verbal, written, visual and gestural) that inform and are produced by,…

Over the past two decades, critical discourse analysis has emerged as a major new multidisciplinary approach to the study of texts and contexts in the public sphere. Developed in Europe, CDA has lately become increasingly popular in North America, where it is proving especially congenial to new directions in rhetoric and composition. This essay…

This paper presents an empirical study grounded in the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson Archer, 2000) and employs quantitative content analysis of student discourse and other artifacts of learning in online courses in an effort to enhance and improve the framework and offer practical implications for online education. As a…

Text analytics refers to the process of analyzing unstructured data from documented sources, including open-ended surveys, blogs, and other types of web dialog. Text analytics has enveloped the concept of text mining, an analysis approach influenced heavily from data mining. While text mining has been covered extensively in various computer…

Earlier studies have suggested that higher education institutions could harness the predictive power of Learning Management System (LMS) data to develop reporting tools that identify at-risk students and allow for more timely pedagogical interventions. This paper confirms and extends this proposition by providing data from an international…

Two experiments investigated the focusing properties of thematic roles, and a third examined the view that thematic role preferences reflect a focusing on the consequences of the represented event. Results focus on the structure of represented events, top-down and bottom-up processes, thematic hierarchies and pronoun comprehension. (35 references)…

Examines the difficulty foreign language learners of Spanish experience in distinguishing between indicative and subjunctive moods after four semesters of study. An analysis of two oral production tasks suggests that, at this intermediate level, they are unlikely to possess enough linguistic foundation to fully benefit from instruction in mood…

Research in the field of intergroup relations has developed considerably over the last two decades, influenced by events and by the historical zeitgeist. We suggest applying an interactional way of dealing with intergroup encounters, which emphasizes the situational macro-context (political, historical and social) in which the contact takes place.…

Examines what linguistic devices speakers use to make an entity salient in a discourse and how they re-refer to discourse entities moving in and out of focus. Speakers' center of attention was manipulated via a videotaped basketball game. Speakers referred to prominent entities as subjects; when they referred to them as objects, they repeated the…

Argues for a redefinition of terms and reconsideration of methodology in research on language attitudes, suggesting that mentalistic definitions of attitudes be replaced with social ones and experimentation using the matched-guise technique be replaced by discourse-analytic research. A qualitative study on Finnish college student attitudes toward…