Up ahead, a foreboding wooden door showing wear from passage of earlier travelers is spotted. As the old porch light emits a pale yellow glow, a key ring emerges from deep inside the coat pocket. Searching for just the right key, the voyager settles on one that also shows age. As the key enters its receptacle and begins to turn, a clicking noise…

The research reported here addresses the status of the unselected meaning of a lexically ambiguous word in developing the larger meaning of the text by independently manipulating lexical and discourse-level variables in the text. In a series of 3 eye-movement experiments, participants read passages that contained 2 occurrences of an ambiguous…

The focus of this article is how "religion", as a materially heterogeneous concept, becomes mobilized in different educational spaces, and the "kinds of knowing" to which this gives rise. Three "case studyish" illustrations are deployed in order to consider how religion and education produce kinds of knowing which…

This article examines the connections between posthumanism and narrative form in Philip Pullman's "Clockwork." Beginning with an account of Pullman's materialism, it argues that the novel represents consciousness and agency as emergent properties of matter, a position that manifests itself first in the tale's figurative language and later in the…

This paper takes issue with Derek Sankey's: "Minds, Brains, and Differences in Personal Understanding", "Educational Philosophy and Theory", 39 (2007), pp. 543-558 on the questions of the post-pedagogical classroom and the forms of knowledge. I then try to show that a theory of meaning framed in terms of normative pragmatics is better able than…

The occasional role of humor as a vehicle for moral criticism is investigated. I begin by distinguishing between this particular role and the other kinds of ways in which humor and amusement might be regarded through a moral lens, consider historical approaches to humor that corroborate the kind of role for it on which my investigation focuses,…

We (Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010) reviewed a growing body of research demonstrating metaphors' far-reaching influence on social information processing. In their commentary, IJzerman and Koole (2011) claimed that we devoted insufficient attention to the origin of metaphors, and they reviewed research showing that bodily, social, and cultural…

The number and range of school types in England is increasing rapidly in response to a neoliberal policy agenda aiming to expand choice of provision as a mechanism for raising educational standards. In this paper, I seek to undertake a mapping of these school types in order to describe and explain what is happening. I capture this busy terrain…

Assessing kindergarten entry skills is complex, requiring attention to skill proficiency and interactive behaviors deemed critical for learning to occur. In our analysis of a state initiative, pilot data were collected on early literacy and numeracy and 2 aspects of important student interactions in the classroom (social and task behaviors) within…

Idiom transparency refers to how speakers think the meaning of the individual words contributes to the figurative meaning of an idiom as a whole (Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989). However, it is not clear how speakers or language learners form their assumptions about an idiom's transparency level. This study set out to discover whether there are…

This article discusses the importance of metaphors in education and in inclusive settings in particular. Metaphors are seen as the fabric of collaboration through dialogue across the curriculum. The article analyzes the dialogues among the Language Arts, Social Studies, and inclusion teacher in a large middle school in the Southwest of the United…

When preparing college-age teacher candidates to teach in diverse contexts, knowing how they reconcile knowledge, self-author, and negotiate social relationships can enhance pedagogy and inform program design. In this article, the authors use a developmental framework they created to examine how teacher candidates' visual metaphors about White…

Casting special education teacher development as an avatar living in a virtual and changing landscape is a creative way to consider the current state of the field and project possible futures. In this commentary, the authors consider areas that may help strengthen the Avatar, including conceptualizing and identifying the outcomes of teacher…

A theory of women's leadership development within the context of Christian higher education is proposed, based on qualitative research involving 16 participants. Motivators to advance into leadership roles were: (a) a sense of relational responsibility; (b) awareness of calling and giftedness for leadership, and (c) a mentoring relationship…

In this article that reviews this special issue, we identify 5 ironies and limitations of educational leadership for social justice: (a) the meaning of inclusive practice, (b) the intersection of identity and difference, (c) the emphasis given to student achievement, (d) the lack of policy and practice coherence, and (e) the separation of…