This study describes the interactions of three adult-child reading partnerships in a program that matches corporate volunteers with "at risk" students for weekly hour-long story reading sessions. Using discourse analysis within a sociocultural framework, the researcher identified variation in the way these partners were constructing the act and…

The purpose of this study was to examine the language ideologies--the assumptions about the nature of language, language variation, and language learning--reflected in a widespread daily editing activity often known as Daily Oral Language or Daily Language Practice. Through a yearlong ethnographic study of grammar instruction in three urban,…

This paper offers a critical discourse analysis of a life skills career education curriculum for schools in British Columbia, Canada. This curriculum calls for the development of a set of life skills that are positioned as central to students' employability. At the heart of the curriculum is a focus on personal development, in particular, the need…

In this paper, we draw upon a framework for analyzing the discursive interactions of science classrooms (Mortimer & Scott, 2003, "Meaning Making in Secondary Science Classrooms," Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press), to probe the movement between authoritative and dialogic discourse in a Brazilian high school science class. More…

Students at all educational levels are daily bombarded by others' attempts to influence them. Influence in the political, religious, social, educational, and advertising arenas pervade people's lives. It is vital to everyone to be aware of influence attempts; to be able to assess whether or not such attempts are useful, friendly, urgent, and in…

This study investigated the influence of sourcing and relatedness on the integration of events embedded in simple stories. Participants read pairs of "breaking news stories" from either 1 or 2 news agencies that were believed to be from the Internet. The stories within each pair were either related by virtue of shared situational dimensions (e.g.,…

In this paper, I utilise key postcolonial perspectives on multiculturalism and boundaries to reconsider some of science education's scholarship on cultural diversity in order to extend the discourses and methodologies of science education. I begin with a brief overview of postcolonialism that argues its ability to offer theoretical insights to…

This article examines the role of the European Union's Commission in weaving together the Bologna Process and the Lisbon research strategy with its existing educational initiatives to define and disseminate an influential vision of European higher education. The article begins by outlining the Commission's activities in relation to EU education…

Scholars around the world are under increasing pressure to publish their research in the medium of English. However, little empirical research has explored how the global premium of English influences the academic text production of scholars working outside of English-speaking countries. This article draws on a longitudinal text-oriented…

Numerous studies have investigated the linguistic expression of stance and evaluation in university registers, focusing especially on academic research writing and to a lesser extent classroom teaching. The present study extends previous research in two ways: (1) it compares and contrasts the use of a wide range of lexico-grammatical features used…

This article has two primary goals: (a) to illustrate how a closer analysis of language can lead to fruitful insights into the activities that it helps constitute, and (b) to demonstrate the complexity of the practices that make up Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOGaming) through just such an analysis. The first goal is in response to the…

In this article, I address the miracle of human language from a socio-cultural perspective, emphasizing the role that language, and more explicitly, the critical study of language, can and should play in developing reflective, socially and politically aware and responsible teachers, administrators, and students. The article begins by examining the…

In this study, dialectical reflexive practice is used to maintain student-teacher interactions in the zone of proximal development. The zone of proximal development is the development-and-learning unit of the child or learner and the author suggests that it is also the fusion point of Marx's dialectical historical materialism: the creation of…

This study investigates the mechanisms of scaffolding in a synchronous network-based environment--the "collaborative virtual workplace". A theoretical "multi-actor" scaffolding model was formulated. The study itself focused on the role and inter-relations of verbal scaffolding by tutor "and peers" during a collaborative process of making decisions…

This paper examines preliminary findings from an ongoing federally funded study of Native language shift and retention in the US Southwest, focusing on in-depth ethnographic interviews with Navajo youth. We begin with an overview of Native American linguistic ecologies, noting the dynamic, variegated and complex nature of language proficiencies…