This article illustrates the importance of classroom discourse and its effect on the writing of students with dyslexia; specifically, this article examines the nature of discourse that took place within the context of two writing classrooms at The Garden School (pseudonym). When teaching students with dyslexia, the teachers in this study followed…

Background: A critical issue in academic assessment is the effect of children's language and culture on their measured performance. Research on this topic has rarely focused on science education, because science is commonly (though erroneously) assumed to be "culture free." Students' scientific understandings are influenced by the cultural values,…

In the context of low fertility and Australia's ageing population, a national longitudinal telephone survey, "Negotiating the Life Course" (NLC), asks women about their childbearing intentions. This paper uses conversation analysis (CA) to examine interaction between an interviewer and respondents on one NLC question about the likelihood…

Purpose: This article explores distributed leadership as it relates to two teacher teams in one public secondary school. Both situational and social aspects of distributed leadership are foci of investigation. Methods: The qualitative study used constant comparative analysis and discourse analysis to explore leadership as a distributed phenomenon.…

This submission contains the Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group (CMESG), held at the Universite de Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The CMESG is a group of mathematicians and mathematics educators who meet annually to discuss mathematics education issues at all levels of learning. The aims of…

This study explored student-led facilitation strategies used to overcome the challenges of instructor-dominated facilitation, enhance the sense of learning community, and encourage student participation in online discussions. It presents a series of cases of students' facilitation strategies and using qualitative data analysis of discussion…

The following study explored the structures and themes found in a few episodes of a popular TV sitcom ("Friends"). Drawing on James Gee's ideas about critical discourse analysis as the main analytical lens for this study, this study discussed the language found in a sitcom and analyzed the complexity of structures and vocabulary in the…

This report examines the issue of teacher turnover in small schools and offers suggestions for how small schools can sustain changes in structure, instruction, and leadership, yet make room for new voices and ideas. Data was drawn from a three-year study of high school conversions in Washington State. The report also includes self-study questions…

Meanings of "citizenship," a concept that has informed teaching practices since nation-states first institutionalized schooling, are shaped over time and through cultural struggles. This article presents a conceptual framework for the discourses that currently construct the meanings of citizenship in contemporary Western cultures,…

Women's representation in the workforce has increased dramatically over the past 30 years; yet, women "take a greater responsibility for the care of children" (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2006). Research has suggested working mothers may experience guilt resulting from the social constrictions of a traditional model of intensive mothering (B.…

Carolyn Miller's oft-cited "Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing," published in 1979, tries to give technical communication faculty more cultural capital in English departments controlled by literature professors. Miller replaces a positivistic emphasis in technical communication pedagogy with rhetoric. She shows how technical knowledge is…

This paper examines the basic components of the process of settlement, types of offences and language of Akan traditional arbitration. The paper also considers arbitration and Akan sociocultural norms and values. The paper finally discusses the status of Akan arbitration within the context of contemporary forms of adjudication, democracy,…

Online dialogues can meaningfully engage a diverse audience and provide a method to both educate and interest the public in complex environmental and social issues. This article discusses a series of e-dialogues conducted for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Canada in which the public engaged in discussions concerning the risk and…

This study focuses on the discourse of an intercontinental on-line Master's programme in adult learning, using English as the lingua franca of the programme and involving four collaborating universities in Sweden, South Africa, Canada and Australia. The programme is highly interactive, emphasising communication between students. Taking the…

While language teacher education programmes and language syllabi in secondary education encourage the use of the target language in the classroom, resources to support teachers in this endeavour, such as books with useful phrases, do not state that the examples they provide are corpus-based, i.e. drawn from actual language use rather than invented…