Teaching to students' local experiences is a tenet of good teaching in many contexts. This study explores the ways eight educators use local meanings in discourse. Through ethnographic work in an elementary school in the township of Roche-Bois, Mauritius, I examine teachers' words about students' localities. Articulating critical discourse…

The purpose of this research is to investigate the development of students' knowledge in the process of learning history. The research questions are as follows: (1) How do students construct their knowledge of history? (2) What main factors affect whether students accept or reject historical information? This research is a qualitative project…

This theoretical paper adopts the point of view of the audience of subtitled films and outlines a theory of subtitles as communicative agents within the participation structures of film reception. Based on examples from three Swiss fiction films -- "Heidi" (2015), "Heimatland" (2015) and "Der Goalie bin ig" (2014) --…

Much of the language at academic conferences is purely metaphorical, so it is important to understand the cultural-historical significance of the metaphors used in constructing organizational gatherings, especially the metaphor invoked by the town hall meeting. Town halls/meetings were spaces where members gathered for democratic rule in a…

From a discourse analytic approach, this study examines suggestion-response episodes in office hour interactions. The theoretical framework of relational work broadly informs the study. A total of thirty-eight office hour interactions constitute the primary data source, and the participants are 3 international instructors and their 34 Turkish…

This essay claims too much and too little for Critical Language Discourse, an interesting subject, but in my view not necessary as a separate topic from Needed Communications Skills Education. Those skills are best learned in context, working on specific challenges with specific audiences where there are particular communications problems to be…

Internationally, coding is increasingly introduced into primary and junior high schools (children generally aged between 5 and 15) on a compulsory basis, though not all stakeholders support this 'initiative'. In response to the public reception, discussion highlights popular argument around compulsory coding in school education. This is an…

Humanizing pedagogies present a promising framework for contesting dehumanizing practices all too common in U.S. urban schools. To co-construct such pedagogies, however, teachers and students must negotiate between the humanizing and dehumanizing discourses that circulate within their school context. Drawing from data collected from a qualitative…

Individuals entering college from disadvantaged economic backgrounds often face multiple obstacles to successful academic performance. Nonetheless, many such students are successful. In this study, we explore the personal characteristics of students from poverty who do well academically in comparison to their economic peers who were less…

With the advent of Common Core-based assessments, and resulting concerns about academic achievement, more and more students may require the level of instructional intensity tutoring affords. The extent of knowledge regarding the discourse that occurs within the tutoring context is, however, limited. As a result, it is difficult to envision and…

For almost two decades student voice has been used and enacted in educational settings for a range of purposes. Student voice theorists have framed it in sociocultural, social constructionist and poststructural terms. It has been located in a range of schooling discourses and there have been powerful critiques of instrumentalist uses of student…

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has a key role in driving educational discourse and global educational governance. Its comparative 'Programme of International School Assessment' (PISA) has explicitly linked the knowledge and skills of young people with the economic potential of countries. Through the International…

The following study situates feedback in two teacher education courses to explore the following research question: How do students rely on discursive features of feedback to reflect on and write their identities as future teachers? A total of 41 participants were recruited for the study. These participants are undergraduate students enrolled in…

Lo Bianco (Curr Issues Lang Plan 9(2):155-178, 2008) proposed an "ensemble of [three] activities" that comprise language policy: the "textual," "discursive," and "public performance" (p. 157). When expressed in language, the current study proposes that each of Lo Bianco's three activities (text, discourse,…

Scholars of sexuality have argued that 'moral panics' about sexuality often stand in for broader conflicts over nationality and belonging. Canada has spent decades cultivating a national image founded on multiculturalism and democratic equality. The Ontario sexuality education curriculum introduced in 2015 drew audible condemnation from a variety…