This paper attempts to present a theoretical framework for researching the out-of-school digital literacy practices of Greek adolescents. The broader aim, however, is to discuss the theoretical and methodological issues concerning research designs to investigate literacy practices in the globalisation era. Based on data representing local and…

This naturalistic study reports the language and literacy-learning opportunities, and the conditions necessary to bring them about, in the art component of an innovative intergenerational programme. The focus is on the children in the programme (median age 4), their interaction with adult participants (median age 85) and facilitators, and the ways…

In "The Name of the Rose," Umberto Eco essentially presents an educative vision of some basic semiotic principles that infuse the textual form of a popular fictional genre--the detective story. In effect, it characterizes the postmodernization of the traditional "whodunnit" moving the genre from the realm of "the real" or the plausible into the…

This paper locates the concept of learning among real-life human experiences and events. Functioning as a sign, a meaningful event can be understood in terms of a cultural extra-linguistic "text." Reading and interpreting diverse cultural "texts" are equivalent to constructing and learning critical symbolic lessons embedded in a continuous process…

In this article, the author describes a pedagogical approach to teaching theory to pre-service teachers. This approach involves articulating academic texts that introduce theoretical ideas and tools with carefully selected popular culture texts that can be taken up to illustrate the elements of a particular theory. Examples of the theories…

Reading is complex and requires that individuals process many types of information concurrently. Contemporary perspectives on cognitive development focus on the ability to process cognitively complex stimuli, indicate cognitive development is domain-specific, and suggest cognitive development occurs across the lifespan. Yet little work has…

Before the advent of symbolism, i.e. before the end of the 16th Century, algebraic calculations were made using natural language. Through a kind of metaphorical process, a few terms from everyday life (e.g. thing, root) acquired a technical mathematical status and constituted the specialized language of algebra. The introduction of letters and…

This dissertation is a study of diverse linguistic resources and contentious identity politics among indigenous Amazonian Kichwas in the city of Tena, Ecuador. Tena is a rapidly developing Amazonian provincial capital city with a long history of interethnic and interlinguistic contact. In recent decades, the course of indigenous Kichwa identity…

Clay's Reading Recovery has been one of the most effective one-to-one tutorial sessions. To make the daily lesson more interesting and fully engage the at-risk readers, the author modified Clay's Reading Recovery Program by conceptualizing phonics and semiotics into early intervention. In this case study, three at-risk first graders formed an…

This article traces the historical and conceptual development of what is known as activity theory, from Vygotsky and Luria, to A. N. Leontev, to Engestrm, in order to illustrate what I see as two problems with the activity theoretic approach, especially as manifest in the work of Leontev and Engestrm: what I call the boundary and/or focus problem…

This paper explores some of the ways in which our insights into the pedagogy of postgraduate supervision may benefit from understanding some of the attributes of psychotherapy. It proposes that psychotherapy involves teaching and learning processes that can be fruitfully compared with the idealised pedagogical model of the dialectic. It develops…

Our argument concerning the debate around the process of "conceptual change" is that it is both an evolutionary learning process and a revolutionary paradigm change. To gain a deeper understanding of the process, the article focuses on the discourse of educational facilitators participating in a community of learners. Applying the methodology of…

Starting with Lyotard's characterisation of postmodernity as incredulity, this is related to another of his key concepts--that of "performativity". Lyotard appears to deploy performativity to characterise those technologies that bring about the optimisation of efficient performance. However, there is another sense of performativity where it is…

This highly readable text demystifies the qualitative research process--and helps readers conceptualize their own studies--by organizing the different research paradigms and traditions into coherent clusters. Real-world examples and firsthand perspectives illustrate the research process; instructive exercises and activities build on each other so…

This reflection paper attempts to show how we foreign language (FL) teachers can help our students develop their visual literacy concerning the use of grammar charts to help them to make better sense of the grammar information presented in their textbooks. In the first part, this reflection overviews the concept of visual literacy (VL), its…