Despite repeating claims that Canadians are less nationalistic than members of other nations, English as a second language (ESL) textbooks often participate in banal repetitions of nation-ness and nationalism. This banal nationalism takes the form of the marking of nation through flags, maps, routine deixis, and nationalized symbols. This study…

The objective of this paper is to discuss the didactic potential offered by the use of a Dynamic Geometry System (DGS) in introducing students to theoretical thinking and specifically to the practice of proof. Starting from a discussion about what constitutes the general objective in developing students' sense of proof, the notion of Theorem is…

This research report examines how two groups of bilingual algebra students made connections among representations while solving a non-routine generalization problem. Using a socio-cultural orientation to mathematics learning, together with a semiotic lens on students' joint mathematical activity, this report details the type of connections among…

Internationally, guidelines for distance education advise the use of feedback from students in designing and redesigning materials. As my own attempt to elicit such feedback was an instructive failure, I decided to draw on theorisations of pedagogy, mediation and subjectivity and on international and local (South African) conceptualisations of a…

In this article, I deconstruct the macro-micro dichotomy by arguing that the very same mass-media messages that appear culturally homogenizing (like catchy tunes and phrases) also invite creative recontextualizations (Bauman and Briggs 1990). Moreover, "the more widely circulated and mass-produced a message is, the more highly diverse the…

In literature, several processes have been suggested to describe conceptual changes being undertaken. However, a few parts of studies analyse in great detail which students' learning processes are involved in physics classes during teaching, and how they are used. Following a socio-constructivist approach using tools coming from discourse…

Goldberg's (1995) recognition that, in addition to various word-level constructions, sentences also instantiate meaningful argument structure constructions enables a non-polysemy-based analysis of various verb 'alternations' (Levin 1993). In such an analysis, meaning variations associated with the use of the same verb in different argument…

In closing, the guest editors of this "Visible Language" special series reflect on the failures identified in the various papers and interpret what this suggests for design education and research in the context of changing practice. The failures cited in this series point out the fractures in our understanding and practices from user-centered,…

Performance in a lexical decision task is crucially dependent on the difficulty of the word-nonword discrimination. More wordlike nonwords cause not only a latency increase for words but also, as reported by Stone and Van Orden (1993), larger word frequency effects. Several current models of lexical decision making can explain these types of…

The consolidation of reconceptualism as a distinctive tradition in curriculum inquiry is commonly understood to go hand-in-hand with the decline and even eclipse of an explicit political orientation in such work. This paper offers an alternative argument, focusing on a re-assessment of what has been called the representation problem, and exploring…

Recognition memory based on familiarity judgments is a form of declarative memory that has been repeatedly associated with the anterior medial temporal lobe. It has been argued that this region sustains familiarity-based recognition not only by retrieving item-specific information but also by coding for those semantic aspects of an event that…

This study is part of a project concerned with the analysis of how students work with two-variable functions. This is of fundamental importance given the role of multivariable functions in mathematics and its applications. The portion of the project we report here concentrates on investigating the relationship between students' notion of subsets…

Postmodern street art operates under a set of references that requires art educators and researchers to adopt alternative analytical frameworks in order to understand its meanings. In this article, we describe social semiotics, critical discourse analysis, and postmodern street performance as well as the relevance of the former two in interpreting…

In today's fast-paced, competitive society, attracting the attention of viewers has become increasingly challenging. Consequently, in broadcast business news, the communicative function of newscasters' and presenters' overall appearance may be highly significant in securing and sustaining viewership in more than one way. This article arose out of…

Information design has practical and theoretical components. As an academic discipline we may view information design as a combined discipline, a practical theory, or as a theoretical practice. So far information design has incorporated facts, influences, methods, practices, principles, processes, strategies, and tools from a large number of…