Educational philosophy in English-speaking countries tends to be informed mainly by analytic philosophy common to Western thinking. A welcome alternative is provided by pragmatism in the tradition of Peirce, James and Dewey. Still, the habit of the so-called linguistic turn has a firm grip in terms of analytic philosophy based on the logic of…

Several studies have been undertaken to develop instruments to measure English teachers' TPACK, but few studies have measured English teachers' TPACK to develop meaningful relationships among technology, content, and pedagogy in the context whereby literacy should be associated with a range of semiotic modes beyond the written language. The…

This article explores the carefully managed semiotic complex found in the Corsican village of Pigna with respect to the themes of pride and profit in the valuation of minority languages. This complex includes the careful coordination of color, graphics, the use of the Corsican language, as well as high-tech soundscaping of place through QR codes…

The 21st century marks the digital era which is characterised by advanced technology and witnesses the increasing use of visual design in the realm of education. Despite various studies addressing the roles of visual design, there is still limited understanding of its roles in electronic educational materials, especially for language learning and…

The call for an expanded, critical and socially-constructed view of literacy in response to contemporary semiotic and technological developments is not new. However, an under investigated area relates to the impact and influence of new media in the teaching and learning of English to speakers of other languages (ESOL). Following an overview of…

Graded readers, simplified versions of literature and other texts at graduated levels of difficulty, are widely employed in contexts of foreign language pedagogy and are widely considered to be a form of written-language input ostensibly suitable for a wide array of developmental stages. However, the efficacy of graded readers is not unchallenged,…

A qualitative research focused on a case study aiming to monitor emergent knowledge in a discourse group by tracking the development of the concept "goal." The analysis, based on "Semiotic Evolution" methodology facilitates the description of interactions between personal perceptions in the group discourse, illustrating the…

This article is part of a larger project focusing upon explanatory illustrations that children encounter in pre- and primary school education. The research questions concerned (a) how preschool children make sense of iconic symbols when placing items of refuse on illustrations of refuse bins in a sorting task and (b) what stumbling blocks they…

We analyze the mathematical solutions of 7- to 8-year-old pupils while individually solving an arithmetic problem. The analysis was based on the "configuration of objects," an instrument derived from the onto-semiotic approach to mathematical knowledge. Results are illustrated through a number of cases. From the analysis of mathematical…

At the heart of the nineteenth-century educational soundscape lies a paradox. Whilst "modern" classrooms generally strived for orderly silence, the goal of its educational practices was the production of competent "citizens". Middle-class boys in particular were expected to acquire a voice fit for business, the professions, or…

This contribution aims to familiarize educators with the unique ways in which videogames convey meaning as a media form and to provide an instrument, based on videogame theory, that educators can easily employ in intermediate and advanced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms to teach critical media literacy. In order to equip teachers…

Symbolic competence, "the ability to actively manipulate and shape one's environment on multiple scales of time and space" (Kramsch & Whiteside, 2008, p. 667), offers researchers and educators the ability to understand how learners position themselves. This positioning involves a vying for semiotic resources as a means to question…

This paper examines the idea of using advertising to facilitate difficult conversations about diversity, politics, race and gender in the classroom. In our current tense political climate, I explore how cultural competence can be developed in the classroom by introducing topics related to diversity through the viewing of Super Bowl 2017…

This study explores fourth year college students' content retrieval from reading textless versus verbal images. Furthermore, it examines the extent to which the respondents comprehend and understand them. The procedures include selecting an image from the internet, designing a written test with its rubrics and exposing it to jury members to…

The dissertation paints a cultural-historical portrait of the New Criticism, a formalist school of twentieth-century literary criticism. My case study revisits the trajectory of this vital school of thought through a fine-grained textual comparison of critical essays produced by principal affiliates. Using "genre" as a guiding concept, I…