It is widely held that, by teaching individuals how to reason through and analyse everyday problems, the teaching of critical thinking develops the deliberative capacities essential to the healthy functioning of democracy. Implicit in this view is the assumption that a certain commensurability exists between the problems presented in such…

In this paper, we focus on some of the ways in which schools are both productive of and constituted by sets of "discursive practices, events and texts" that contribute to the process of policy enactment. As Colebatch (2002: 2) says, "policy involves the creation of order--that is, shared understandings about how the various participants will act…

There is currently much interest in creating pedagogically-oriented descriptions of formulaic language. Research in this area has typically taken what we call a "form-first" approach, in which formulas are identified as the most frequent recurrent forms in a relevant corpus. While this research continues to yield valuable results, the present…

In this study, I present an analysis of instructor comments on assignments written for upper-division courses in the biological sciences as a window into current practices around teaching science writing to major students. My results demonstrate that, while the overwhelming majority of instructors respond primarily to lower order issues of grammar…

This article examines youth protests against education privatization in the post-Soviet countries of Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine. Drawing on a sample of online sources and scholarly articles, this study uses critical discourse analysis and visual methodologies to examine why and how post-Soviet university students have organized to protest against…

The present study aims to investigate the general characteristics of topicprominent typological interlanguage development of Chinese learners of English in terms of acquiring subject-prominent English structures from a discourse perspective. Topic structures mainly appear in Chinese discourse in the form of topic chains (Wang, 2002; 2004). The…

Teacher preparation programs commonly use observational instruments to assess the progress and the exit performances of teacher candidates. However, while these instruments have been described and several have been studied for effectiveness, the field lacks a close examination of how they position participants: teacher candidates, K-12 pupils, and…

The focus of the article is on the ideal of using dialogue to promote contact between school and home. The aim was to explore this ideal by taking into account both an observed interaction session and how the participants perceive this interaction. The study draws on data from observation of a meeting about a pupil with special needs and his…

Discussions that occur during book reading between parents and preschool children relate to children's language development, especially discussions during picture books that include extended discourse, a form of abstract language. While a recent report shows increased chapter book reading among families with preschool children, it is unknown…

This study examined discursive choices made by the instructor of a Black Studies course in constructing what counted as blogging and the history of jazz; how students showed evidence of meeting the course requirements, and how particular students engaged with issues of race and diversity in their blogs. The instructor required blogging to enable…

This paper examines teacher accountability and authority in early childhood policy. It reports on data from a study that investigated the influences affecting early childhood teacher decision-making at the preschool level in Victoria, Australia. Using a question raised by Ball "Where are the teachers in all this [policy]?" provided a…

Gender education has been emphasized in Taiwan in recent years. Related research undertaken such as textbook reviewing and teachers' gender consciousness has pointed out potential problems in regard to gender in education. The process of shaping gender in a school per se has not yet been explored. This article aims to elaborate on how school…

Previous research within the field of argumentation has established that argumentation plays an important role in a variety of professions. Written argumentation has been extensively explored and investigated to examine its various aspects, including argument structures and schemes, argumentative strength, the role of audience, the evaluation of…

In this study we compare test takers' performance on the Speaking section of the TOEFL iBT™and their performances during their real-life academic studies. Thirty international graduate students from mixed language backgrounds in two different disciplines (Sciences and Social Sciences) responded to two independent and four integrated speaking tasks…

This article explores the perceptions of development through metaphor use by students of International Business Management Studies at The Hague University. Students' reflections upon the concepts of nature and development before and after educational intervention are examined through discourse analysis and narrative analysis. Results show that…