What role can online communities play in meeting the informal learning needs of a professional association? This article presents the results of an interpretive study of the experiences of coordinators of Alberta Community Adult Learning Councils who participated in an online community of practice designed to support informal workplace learning.…

This paper reports on two critical incidents in the progress towards implementing a vernacular language programme in the village school at Aulua, Malakula, in Vanuatu. In stage one of the fieldwork, (2000-1) an orthography was created by a committee. An element of the second stage of the project (2004-5) was a workshop to create the primers and…

Managing organizations in modern societies takes place through persuasion and the seductive use of language rather than, as in past societies, through physical violence and repression. In this respect new management discourses imply a linguistic process where actors within education gradually become defined within other frames of reference. This…

In this paper, we explore how students used two resources, the in-class lecture and the online newsgroup, to write computer programs. By focusing on the questions students asked in each setting, we compare these two learning environments. Questions students asked during lecture typically related to the material the instructor was presenting. In…

This article examines students' narrative responses to reading professional literacy histories. Demonstrating the importance of narrative as a way of learning, it shows how elementary education majors of diverse backgrounds explore their relation with language in a traditional grammar class. Cajun, Creole, and African American students recover…

In this paper, the author explores her experiences growing up of being defined as "different" due to her class background. The author uses the term "difference" to mean how the concept of the "other" is defined and understood in this society. The "other" in this instance are individuals or groups who have existed on the margins of the society;…

Online discourse environments are increasingly popular both in distance education contexts and as adjuncts to face-to-face learning. For many participants such contexts are experienced as positive, community-supported learning opportunities, but this is not the case for everyone. Understanding more about the online and off-line factors that…

Drawing from a six-month ethnographic study, this article explores the negotiation of gendered identities through classroom literacy practices in an urban high school, paying particular attention to how gendered identities are interwoven with those of race, class, and other social identities during literary discussions. I draw upon the notion that…

The process of choosing strategies within mathematization is described in a multi-method study on solving additions and subtractions. The sample consisted of 40 dyads of 3rd-graders and their teacher from ten mainstream primary schools. From each classroom the two students rated as highest and the two rated as lowest were selected to take part in…

This paper explores the long and winding road to integrating linguistic approaches to vernacular dialects in the classroom. After exploring past roadblocks, the author shares vignettes and classroom practices of her collaborator, Rachel Swords, who has succeeded in bringing Contrastive Analysis and Code-switching to her second and third-grade…

Implicit negative feedback has been shown to facilitate SLA, and the extent to which such feedback is given is related to a variety of task and interlocutor variables. The background of a native speaker (NS), in terms of amount of experience in interactions with nonnative speakers (NNSs), has been shown to affect the quantity of implicit negative…

Studies of language issues in postcolonial Hong Kong are abundant. While the majority is concerned with the language policy and medium of instruction, there seems to be insufficient discussion on the subject matter of our English lessons, which, this paper argues, are ideology-ridden. Following the tradition of critical discourse analysis and…

Judith Butler is perhaps best known for her take-up of the debate between Derrida and Austin over the function of the performative and her subsequent suggestion that the subject be understood as performatively constituted. Another important but less often noted move within Butler's consideration of the processes through which the subject is…

Within an evidentiary framework for operationally defining academic English language proficiency (AELP), linguistic analyses of standards, classroom discourse, and textbooks have led to specifications for assessment of AELP. The test development process described here is novel due to the emphasis on using linguistic profiles to inform the …

An analysis of war reporting in Japan during World War II examines, from a semantico-syntactic perspective, how language is used to systematize, transform, and sometimes mask reality. In wartime, a strong form of solidarity and control is essential as a device for unification and for maintaining popular morale. The approach is based in the notion…