This paper addresses an issue of increasing significance in the context of taught educational doctorates and argues that this may have wider applicability for doctoral students across a range of social science disciplines. It identifies the need to engage with policy analysis as a key element of such programmes and attempts to address students'…

This article seeks to promote the generation of a discourse of the postmodern community work professional. A shared discourse will lead, we propose to shared capital. We argue that there is a tension between the modern and postmodern for those of us engaged in the profession of community learning and development (CL&D). We need to value…

This research study investigated how the teachers and students at a Persian heritage language class acknowledged and modified their affective behavior based on the affective feedback they received from one another. The notion that interactants can modify their affective output in such fashion is referred in the literature as affective alignment…

The objective of this article is to identify and analyse discourses in Spain on intensive parenting in the context of the changes that have taken place in relations between parents and their children in contemporary societies. To do this, the author analyses the discourses from 16 in-depth interviews carried out with parents and from 14 focus…

Mobile computers are now increasingly applied to facilitate face-to-face collaborative learning. However, the factors affecting face-to-face peer interactions are complex as they involve rich communication media. In particular, non-verbal interactions are necessary to convey critical communication messages in face-to-face communication. Through…

This article aims to offer an alternative to traditional participation frameworks used to analyse teacher/pupil talk in the classroom. Within curricular areas where learners are encouraged to articulate their own meaning and be creative in their use of language, a traditional participation framework, such as Initiation, Response, Follow-up, may…

This article reports on a study of Western male English language teachers and considers the ways in which their identities were shaped in relation to discourses of masculinity and heterosexuality. The article first argues that masculinity and heterosexuality have remained unmarked categories in research on TESOL teacher identities. It then draws…

The present cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary study was aimed at exploring the similarities and differences between English and Indonesian research articles from the disciplines of applied linguistics and chemistry in terms of frequency of usage of hedges (e.g. "perhaps," "may") and boosters (e.g. "clearly,"…

This dissertation examines the discourse produced by beginning learners of Spanish using social media. Specifically, it looks at the use and development of interactional resources during two video-mediated conversations. Through a combination of Conversation Analysis tools and quantitative data analysis, the use of turn-taking strategies, repair…

Various computer tools have been developed to support educators' assessment of student writing, including automated essay scoring and automated writing evaluation systems. Research demonstrates that these systems exhibit relatively high scoring accuracy but uncertain instructional efficacy. Students' writing proficiency does not necessarily…

This dissertation addresses questions about the impact and consequences of current school reforms by examining how mandated packaged reading programs contribute to a commodification of knowledge that is changing conceptualizations of literacy, teaching, and learning. Grounded in cultural-historical theories of literacy and learning, this work…

Conversational repair often occurs in conversations when people attempt to address communicative breakdowns or inaccuracy by way of repeating what have been said or putting them in another way. The review of literature on conversational repair revealed that as an important concept in pragmatic aspect of language, it is an effective strategy to…

This paper explores the expression of certainty in a set of high- and low-rated Geography argumentative essays. Using one aspect of Hunston's (1989, 2000) concept of the evaluation of status, the paper compares the statement types used to construe the writer's expression of certainty in the construction of arguments. Drawing on the framework,…

This article examines web comments written by Chinese learners on online open courses that are originally produced by leading universities in the United States and United Kingdom and are later introduced to China with Chinese translation. It applies the thematic discourse analysis strategy to classify the comments into themes to explore the…

Family language policy refers to explicit and overt decisions parents make about language use and language learning as well as implicit processes that legitimize certain language and literacy practices over others in the home. Studies in family language policy have emphasized the ways in which family-internal processes are shaped by and shape…