How language is used has political implications as well as communicational consequences. Regional development, using means of systematic support for innovation, is a widespread phenomenon globally that also includes numerous political ambitions and implications. This article argues that ambiguities regarding the use of terms such as 'innovation…

Despite best efforts to the contrary, obscenity oozes out from under the rugs of "polite" schooling and "tidy" society. In this post-qualitative inquiry, the authors pursue questions in defense of pedagogies of obscenity. In what ways do educators fail to educate when they eschew obscenity, understand shame and disgust as…

Compassion is of high global relevance, being positioned as a core global competency for sustainable lifestyles promoting well-being, global citizenship and peace, which should be fostered in education. However, as a contested concept there is a vast gap in knowledge regarding compassion in early childhood education (ECE). In response, this…

This article discusses the familiar notion of the shibboleth in situations of exclusion, focusing on the non-use, rather than the use, of language, for which I propose the term the anti-shibboleth. The article begins with an introduction to the concept of the shibboleth, giving examples from situations of violent conflict and suppression such as…

Pre-school children's engagement with activities in child-initiated play is taken to be an important mediating factor in their learning. The adult's role in supporting and enhancing children's play is an area of significant study. However, how children play when play is child-initiated, and how this maps to our assumptions and expectations about…

Requesting plays a key role in human communication. One can request the same thing in multiple ways (e.g., "Pass the salt" vs. "Could you pass the salt?"). How do speakers determine which request form to produce? And how does this choice affect a recipient's evaluation of a request? Previous analyses of naturalistic…

This article examines the use of the phrase "best practices" in academic literature that discusses online learning. Results of our study indicate that, despite the ubiquity of this phrase in academic literature concerning online pedagogy, the majority of articles lack empirical support for promoting certain approaches as "best…

The study examined code-switching in retail encounters involving sales personnel of cars, credit cards, beauty products, and food products with a Chinese customer. Altogether 27 retail encounters were audio-taped and transcribed. Analysis of the 14,944-word corpus was conducted using Gumperz's [(1982). "Discourse strategies." Cambridge:…

This article seeks to contribute new perspectives to the ontology and epistemology of preschool science education by exploring the idea of using everyday verbs, rather than nouns, to discern possibilities for science learning in preschool. Herein, the author merges empirical examples from preschools with findings from research on children's noun…

The past decades have seen dramatic improvements to dictionary content and format. Yet dictionaries -- both paper-based and digital -- remain disappointingly underused. As a result, it is widely acknowledged that more needs to be done to train people in dictionary-consultation skills. Another solution would be to build lexicographic resources that…

Crosscutting concepts, such as "structure" and "function," are present in courses at multiple educational levels across the disciplines. These two terms are used individually in everyday language and have a long, rich history. The authors explore the meaning and presentation of biological function, which often is not clearly…

The Documentational Approach To Didactics (DAD) aims to study teachers' professional development through their interactions with their resources for/from teaching. It has been introduced in the French community of didactics of mathematics in 2007, then extended at an international level. It has been introduced as an entry in the Encyclopedia of…

The Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) has synthesized key data on English learners (ELs) into two-page sheets on a variety of subjects. This fact sheet focuses on: (1) Most Common Home Languages and Language Categories (Excluding Spanish) Spoken by English Learner Students in K-12: 2016-17 School Year; (2) Numbers of Reported English…

Dialogic frameworks make visible the nature of social interaction providing insights into the formation of epistemic awareness. The conscious design of classroom interaction as both pedagogic practice and pedagogic tool for knowledge co-construction remains under represented in initial teacher education programs of study. This empirical research…

Disproportionality is defined as the extent to which membership in a given group, such as gender, race/ethnicity, or socioeconomic strata, differentially affects the probability of a given outcome (e.g., being placed into special education or being assigned an out-of-school suspension). Underpinnings of disproportionality study include the broad…