Recent developments have broadened the definition of literacy to multiple literacies--bodies of knowledge, skills, and social practices with which we understand, interpret, and use the symbol systems of our culture. This compilation looks at the various literacies as the application of critical abilities to several domains of importance to adult…

The plight of students learning language simultaneously with content material, particularly math, spurred this study of the power of socioculturally based pedagogy, such as Instructional Conversation (IC), to increase Spanish-speaking minority students' acquisition of English math lexicon and concepts. This article describes a series of four ICs…

Considerable attention has been given recently to how children educate each other and how to maximize the cognitive benefits of peer learning. Based on papers presented at a 1996 symposium on Cognitive Skills and Learning with Peers, this book focuses on peer learning. Part 1 presents implications of Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories. Part 2…

The educational memories of 26 Spanish adults between the ages of 50 and 92 years who had attended school between 1921 and 1956 were explored in a narrative analysis. The adults' oral biographies were obtained through semi-structured interviews examining their life experiences and transitions. The participants' grandchildren conducted the…

This collection of essays is authored by social scientists who are concerned primarily with relationships between academic knowledge and political power, rethinking the traditional view of politics and science as mutually exclusive fields of study. Chapters are organized into three parts: "Introduction"; "The Institutional Politics of Knowledge…

A social literacies perspective is used to analyze a rap written by a high school student. The article begins with an examination of the student's uses of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and standard English. The student writing sample and the researcher's analysis are subjected to review by two other African American teenagers, and…

Recommends greater cooperation, especially concerning research, among political science, telecommunications, speech communications, and rhetoric. Discovers a useful paradigm in the combination of political content analysis and rhetorical analysis. Briefly discusses works that have synthesized these two approaches. (MJP)

Compares patterns of subject position pronominalization and zero anaphora in English in stories written by monolingual U.S. students and bilingual Mexican students at grades 6 and 12. The possibility of both sentential and discourse level transfer effects resulting from the fact that Spanish allows subject deletion is investigated as is the…

This paper examines the notion of schooling and draws on the experiences of Malaysian teenage schoolgirls in contemporary postcolonial Malaysia. Using a critical approach to understandings of schooling, the author unpacks the links between the macro, micro and the personal in examining these girls' negotiations with discourses of schooling. The…

This descriptive study addressed the role of virtual learning environments in fostering reflective thought among preservice teachers through dialogic interaction. Preservice teachers tend to view teaching as a formulaic application of theory and strategies. When challenged with making decisions in novel settings, they are often unable to apply…

This paper is concerned with teaching and learning in a blended e-learning course that supports students in reflecting on and transforming their practice. In this paper we focus on two key aspects of the online learning environment: (i) the selection of the topic of discussion (the discussion question) by the tutor and how this influences the…

High attrition rates among new teachers are of concern to teacher educators. Support mechanisms may help teachers feel less isolated in their new profession. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies can connect novice teachers in ways that are both time and place independent. Most research on asynchronous online discussions has focused…

This article provides an analysis of shifts that have taken place in policy discourses on lifelong learning by organisations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and cultural Organisation, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Union. The article documents the shifts in these discourses over time,…

This paper reports the findings of a case study that explores the relationship between feedback and revision in the online teaching of two EFL adult writers. The model of feedback adopted was one of content-based feedback followed by form-focused feedback in a series of multidraft compositions. A quantitative analysis of minimal terminal units…

Discourse strategies used by status-unequal interlocutors expressing disagreement are discussed. The paper focuses on the influence of role relationships on semantic formulas. A comparative study of discourse strategies used by native speakers of Turkish and North American English in the same speech event is also reported. Data were gathered from…