This article derives from my Master thesis on the development of processes of Context Based Participatory Professional Development undertaken with a group of educators and a pedagogical leader. This study narrates the journey of professional development of one of these educators working towards the transformation of the pedagogy developed with her…

Scholars writing on agency argue that normally, individuals who experience social structures as comfortable will tend to want to reproduce them while those who experience these structures as oppressive will want to change them. This is a bleak outlook because it suggests that those in positions of power and influence are less likely to seek to…

Seedhouse (2004) suggested that L2 classroom interaction can be understood in terms of sub-varieties or L2 classroom contexts. These are the 'interfaces' between pedagogy and interaction in which a particular pedagogical focus combines with a particular organisation of the interaction. However, Conversation Analysis does not see such organisations…

Drawing on science and technology studies (STS), this article explores information practices around children deemed to be 'at risk'. Risk is not a self-evident epistemic object. Different professional instructions mobilize the concept of context to emphasize the partiality and contingency of descriptions of 'risk'. This article develops the…

This study advances research into individuals' willingness to communicate in an additional language (L2 WTC) in classroom settings by departing from existing inquiry in two ways. First, it takes a multidimensional view of an "individual" in the classroom by integrating students' various identities as persons engaged in meaning making…

As the country faces chronic shortages of special education teachers, it is essential that researchers consider factors and practices that could improve the recruitment and retention of teachers. This study examined demographic and contextual factors related to special education teacher longevity in a rural state in the Midwest. This study…

This study investigated whether L2 English learners' prosodic properties in speech acts change as they are immersed in the English-speaking academic community over time, and if so, what individual and contextual factors (proficiency, orientation to language study, and target language contact) potentially affect these changes. Forty-seven Japanese…

International students experience unique challenges that place them at risk for academic misconduct violations, including language, academic expectations, cultural differences, academic preparedness, and policy understanding. Academic misconduct issues can significantly risk student success, leaving international students especially susceptible to…

With U.S. classrooms increasingly characterized by linguistic diversity, policies mandating teacher training around English learning have proliferated. Recent federal oversight prompted Massachusetts to implement an initiative to endorse its 70,000+ teachers in Sheltered English Immersion (SEI). While policy research has productively emphasized…

Research findings: This study examined the dual language development and experience of the understudied Chinese dual language learners (DLLs). Twice in the preschool/pre-k year (about 4 months apart), we assessed 39 Chinese 3- and 4-year-old DLLs' receptive vocabularies in English and Chinese, interviewed 37 parents about the language use and…

In this qualitative study, we explored the opportunities and difficulties experienced by cognitively high-ability students during the transition to higher education. Although high-ability individuals undoubtedly have the cognitive capacity to excel academically, research has demonstrated persistent underachievement among this group of students,…

Willingness to communicate (WTC) is the construct of a language learner's readiness to communicate with a specific person using the target language at a particular time (MacIntyre et al, 1998). This study aimed to investigate Chinese English learners' WTC in an international school in Thailand. The study used semi-structured interviews to identify…

This paper investigates the frequency and contextual uses of the metadiscoursal devices of evidentials, code glosses, hedges and boosters in four academic disciplines, namely, linguistics, literature, chemistry and medicine. Hyland and Hinkel's taxonomies of metadiscourse provided the search items. The data analyzed consisted of a corpus of forty…

It is well documented that engineering practice is as much social as it is technical. Providing accurate course mapping and supporting teaching staff to scaffold engineering practice learning through whole of programme curriculum are key challenges. This study proposes a conceptual framework for engineering professional practice in an Australian…

Based on the comprehensive comparison of the principles of communicative language teaching (CLT) and the pedagogic ideas of Confucian heritage culture (CHC), this study discusses the conceptual common ground, where both principles can be reconciled, and considers practical, negotiated pedagogic forms with the suggestion of some cases of…