This paper investigates the role of the lifelong learning discourse in actual governmentality. Starting with a description of the origins of lifelong learning in the discussions about alternative education in the 1960s and 1970s, the current adoption of lifelong learning by the European Union is used to show its critical components. Along with the…

The study explores students' use of language in the process of making sense of genetics concepts. It aims to analyze primary and secondary discourses, and examine the relationship between social practices and discourses. Sixth-grade students were interviewed before and during four weeks instruction on genetics. General trends were detected…

A large portion of the early childhood literature in the area of cultural, racial, and linguistic diversity addresses the practices of institutions for young children, immigrant/refugee parents' understandings of their situation, and provides recommendations for more inclusive practices. This body of literature has proved very useful in bringing…

The historical process of the institutionalisation of childhood is in a period of intensification, as children enter institutions at ever earlier ages and remain in them for longer periods. This intensification presents great opportunities but also involves many risks since everything is dangerous. A particular set of risks are produced from the…

Computer mediated conferencing (CMC) has been widely viewed as a valuable forum for providing opportunities for interaction among learners in a distance education setting. Interaction in distance contexts; however, is not well understood, and it has been argued that social markers are cued in online communications and that gender influences…

This article reports some outcomes from an exploratory study that compares children diagnosed with ADHD and without language impairment with typically developing children for aspects of language use. Discourse analysis based on a systemic functional linguistics approach is applied to spoken and written samples from three different text types that…

We argue that the student teaching seminar, a co-requisite to student teaching, may best be construed as a "first" introduction to a teacher learning community and to inquiry-oriented professional development. Using a qualitative case study design and discourse analysis, we examine 60 "Teaching Inquiries" (TIs) occurring in student teaching…

There is extensive evidence of a "glass ceiling" for women across the labour market. Though schools have widely been described as "feminized" work environments, the under-representation of women at school management level is well established. Based on a study of women teachers' careers and promotion in the English school sector…

This article presents a critical analysis of language ideologies in the instructional discourse of Spanish for heritage speakers in the United States. We focus on the discourse present in prefaces and introductions to Spanish for heritage speakers textbooks published between 1970 and 2000. Whereas previous research on language ideologies in…

To examine relationships between children's exposure to and use of new or rare words during preschool years and their later performance on vocabulary-related measures, this study explored frequencies of rare word use in different conversational settings. The study also tracked the use of rare words by mothers and children and related those results…

A study examined from a feminist poststructuralist perspective the discourses available in a classroom using a critical pedagogy, based on a belief that teaches need to make it possible for their students to question the social world constructed in texts. The teacher of an Australian junior primary classroom (with students age five to eight) took…

A study investigated the relationship between formal and conversational logic. Thirty-two male and 32 female college students evaluated the conclusions of conditional syllogism and participated in an interview adapted from Deanna Kuhn's (1991) monograph, "The Skills of Argument." Students were asked to provide explanations for several…

This paper examines two studies on language development and narrative discourse structure by looking at how language shapes and is shaped by culture-specific experiences. Conversations between 20 middle-class Japanese preschoolers, aged 4-5 years old, and their mothers were analyzed to study differences in narrative elicitation by mothers towards…

Taking a Vygotskian perspective, this monograph focuses on the quality of interaction between children and staff in Australian child care and education programs. Aspects of quality interaction are presented through examples of interaction and through personal stories of staff analyzing their interactional patterns through video and audiotapes.…

This book provides an introduction to poststructuralism by examining a range of interrelated themes central to the field of education that focus on the critique of reason and the problematic nature of the subject. The first chapter examines the history of poststructuralism in terms of the broader canvas of European formalism, futurism, surrealism,…