In January 2012, Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond announced a radical measure that would see every Scottish school student study a Scottish text from a prescribed list. In 2010, Michael Gove announced that "Our literature is the best in the world" and that every pupil should study particular authors. The "cultural…

This study of John 1:1-18 describes how John (the speaker) presented his message to his audience within their activity of verbal communication. By focusing on verbal meaning, this interpretation analyzes how John presented and expressed his meanings through language by interpreting this text based on the seamless interrelation between John's…

As decades pass, new rounds of educational discussion surrounding teacher pay emerge calling for alternative compensation based on performance indicators. While much of the research on this latest iteration of performance pay, inspired by the presidential initiatives "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top," focuses on…

The framework of mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) is brought under the discursive framework of Commognition in order to track learning in professional development (PD). I follow MKT in differentiating between subject matter discourse and pedagogical discourse. The framework, which I call Mathematical Discourse for Teaching (MDT) permits a…

This paper demonstrates how the use of adequate descriptive feedback on assessment enhances the teaching, learning and academic performance of learners of auditing. Literature shows that this mode of feedback is transformative as it relies heavily on the particular, specific and localised learning styles of the individual learner. It also…

Part of the decolonisation and transformation of higher education institutions is the re-construction of its leadership. This requires not only a review but also a dissolution of traditions, conventions and organisational forms that universities have inherited, including a re-imagining of leadership in higher education. Equity in representation of…

This study examines the effect of questions on fostering interaction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. It also seeks to determine the characteristics of questions that promote increased classroom interaction. Data were collected through video recordings of EFL classrooms which were analyzed using Discourse Analysis techniques.…

Set within the context of a global pursuit towards the internationalisation of higher education, this paper critically examines student discourse in a globally connected classroom between learners in the USA and Singapore. It makes salient some of the cultural assumptions and tensions that undergird students' discourse in collaborative…

In this article the author expresses a concern that teacher educators are sending teacher candidates ill-prepared into their classrooms to navigate diversity and to open controversial issues in their own classes. The author calls for the increased inclusion of critical theories in teacher education as an important move, especially when neoliberal…

This article explores the discourse practices of an Indigenous, community-based charter school and its efforts to create space for Indigenous both/and identities across rural-urban divides. The ethnographic portrait of Urban Native Middle School (UNMS) analyzes the discourse of making "a space for you", which brings together rural and…

This study describes how members of a transnational social network of Mexican bilinguals living in Chicago manipulate their language on online social media to facilitate and maintain close connections across borders. Using a discourse-centered online ethnographic approach, I examine conversations posted on members' Facebook walls and the contexts…

Willingness to communicate (WTC) in a second language class has been shown to be transient and situation-dependent. Previous studies mostly elicited data from learners' self-reports through interviews or diaries, and the data analyses were largely confined to the medium of language, marginalizing other semiotic resources such as gesture or…

This paper considers how, in the process of positioning that is implicit in every interaction, all of us employ multiple and often competing narratives when we talk about cultural identity and our relationships with new cultural environments. In interviews with newly arrived postgraduate students about their experience of travelling to study…

This review of research examines classroom conversations about race with a theoretical framing oriented to understanding how such conversations may disrupt social and educational inequalities. The review covers research on how classroom conversations on race contribute to students' and educators' understandings of a racialized society, their…

In this article we report case study research which focused on the nature of parent-teacher conversations at one English high school. Our research aims were to discover what parents and teachers said to each other during these events and examine how they constructed their talk. Audio recordings of parent-teacher meetings/conferences were analyzed…