In this article we consider data arising from student-teacher-researcher interactions taking place in the context of an experimental teaching program making use of multiple modes of communication and representation to explore three-dimensional (3D) shape. As teachers/researchers attempted to support student use of a logo-like formal language for…

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) is an administrative fact for many counsellors. This psychiatric approach to formulating client concerns runs counter to those used by counsellors of many approaches (e.g., systemic, feminist). Using an online survey of counsellors (N = 116), invited contributions to a website…

Non-participation and poor quality participation in online environments is often discussed in the literature. Interaction and engagement in online discussions are critical for understanding and constructing new knowledge. In this case study, we examined messages posted by graduate students in four online debates for quantity and quality. The…

This article presents a discourse analysis of President Barack Obama's 2011 State of the Union Address. Fredric Jameson's concepts of cognitive mapping, cultural revolution, and the unconscious are employed to examine the president's vision of educational and economic transformation. Ultimately, it is argued this vision evokes a world in which…

Two experiments aim at describing the impact of friendship during a synchronous collaborative information retrieval (SCIR) with young pupils (recruited in Grade 3). In the first study, 68 pupils were asked to look for 13 answers in one of the three following conditions: on an individual basis (condition "Single"), as part of a designed duo with…

In these days of ubiquitous tweeting, language teachers must consider whether microblogging is an activity that will bring benefits to the learning experience. Recent research (Junco et al., 2010; Messner, 2009, among others) indicates that Twitter is becoming increasingly popular in classrooms, but few studies (see for example, Borau et al.,…

The present study investigated the impact of critical discourse analysis (CDA) on TEFL students' critical thinking (CT) ability in "Reading Journalistic Texts" classes. In so doing, the study utilized an experimental design with 24 participants in the control group and 29 participants in the experimental group. The results of a pretest indicated…

This discussion draws attention to the discriminatory efforts of policymakers in Arizona to professionally marginalize public school teachers deemed to have an accent. In addition to debunking the linguistic and pedagogic validity of this policy, we emphasize the role of the media in the (re)construction and justification of language ideologies…

This exploratory study investigates the linguistic and social interaction of four intermediate EFL learners during game play in a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). Twelve illustrative episodes drawn from the participants' text chat, collected in four 70-minute sessions held over a one-month period, are analyzed from a…

This article explores how Dutch physical education (PE) teachers discursively construct body differences between students related to gender, (dis)ability and health. Our results show how disciplinary technologies of categorisation and normalisation are embedded in two distinct discourses that our participants used: the discourse of naturalness for…

This article draws from ethnographic data collected during a 23-month--language socialization study of mixed-status Mexican families living in the New Latino Diaspora. The analysis focuses on the ways in which siblings in one family talk about citizenship during a discursive event that I call the Planning for the Future Routine. The findings show…

This study examines the indexicality of discourse markers (DMs) in Chinese conversational narrative. Drawing upon theoretical and methodological principles related to narrative dimensions (Ochs & Capps, 2001), narrative desires (Ochs, 1997, 2004), and narrative positioning (Bamberg, 1997), this work proposes an integrated analytical framework for…

Many within the field of educational systems design believe that in order for the ideal system to exist, where all stakeholders benefit, the users of the system must be involved in its design and implementation. This requires the users to engage in dialogue. First, however, more overall involvement is necessary in order to bring these stakeholders…

Advice literature is ubiquitous. Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999) argue that our modern lives motivate if not require us to consult the experts. In many fields, experts have negotiated a discourse accessible to the public in handbooks, guidebooks, self-help manuals, etc. As I discover in this study, these public discourses can reinscribe both…

Theories of human development and learning provide an essential framework in which to understand the mechanisms involved in the process of formal instruction as a specific form of teaching and learning in the school setting. The sociocultural theory of development, founded on the works of Lev Vygotsky, espouses the view that social interaction…