Examines a theoretical perspective on the ways in which children progress in learning mathematics. Suggests that there is difficulty in associating teaching discourses with the mathematics they locate that can result in an incommensurability between alternative perspectives being offered. Resists attempts to privilege any particular account but…

Analyzes why the transfer of formal learning to outside school situations is problematical in principle and undependable in practice. Recommends an alternative approach for building bridges between practices based on analyzing the discourses involved as a system of signs and looking for appropriate points of inter-relation between them. (Contains…

Language patterns of family business owners were explored by identifying discourse styles and emphasized ideas in four presenting contexts: business, family, intersection of family and business, and business success. The content analysis supports the existence of a general discourse style within family businesses and of similarities and…

In this article, we articulate the critical differences between memory-based processing and explanation-based processing. We suggest that the most important claim of memory-based text processing is that the automatic processes that function with respect to text processing are all applications of ordinary memory processes. This claim contrasts with…

Often, composition teachers present public debate as if it occurs on a rhetorically level playing field, with victory going to the person who argues most logically. Real-world contestants are seldom so equal in power. We can enrich our pedagogy by studying such encounters; example: the 1263 disputation at Barcelona between Rabbi Nachmanides and…

Service-learning, an increasingly popular pedagogical strategy in higher education, has been largely ignored in the scholarship of literature teaching. Because political and social activities are inextricably linked with aesthetic and intellectual activities, literary texts and community service can work in complementary ways to inform students'…

The interpretive framework for the study of learning introduced in this article and called "commognitive" is grounded in the assumption that thinking is a form of communication and that learning mathematics is tantamount to modifying and extending one's discourse. These basic tenets lead to the conclusion that substantial discursive change, rather…

According to Mikhail Bakhtin, a 20th century Russian linguist and literacy critic, texts represent battlegrounds for competing voices, including the author's, the narrator's, and the characters'. This concept of "heteroglossia" can be applied to a short story such as Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," about…

Mikhail Bakhtin's literary theory, particularly his voice-oriented term, "heteroglossia," can easily be brought to bear on the teaching of voice in the composition classroom. Bakhtin not only likes the concept of voice, but at times even seems obsessed with it. The notion of heteroglossia suggests a diversity of discourses or voices, and…

In recent years some exceptionally optimistic writings by feminist scholars have addressed a shift away from the male manque model of femininity to one celebrating feminine growth. Archetypal myths have inculcated people's minds with the notion that domination and conquest serve to justify men's domination over the feminine. Narrative communicates…

Using experimental narratives in which discourse order and event order were not confounded, a study investigated the role of global discourse organization on the comprehension of narrative texts. Subjects, 100 college students, listened to tape recorded passages representing five types of discourse organization: canonical, backward, flashback,…

McLaren's recent (post-2000) writings promote a form of agency called "revolutionary critical pedagogy," and a type of agent, the "committed intellectual" (McLaren 2005b, p. 253-281). But one can find an earlier agent-type in McLaren's (1986) "Schooling as a Ritual Performance", the "liminal servant," that…

Explores the discourse modes put forth in Bain's nineteenth century college textbook "English Composition and Rhetoric." Discusses his rationale for shifting from the previous belletristic schemes to the forms of description, narration, exposition, persuasion, and poetry. (HTH)

Examines James Kinneavy's "Theory of Discourse," arguing that he fails to provide compelling support for the theory, and that a number of specific assertions fail to hold up under scrutiny. Discusses weaknesses in his handling of referential and persuasive discourse. (HTH)

The Worthington City School District, Worthington, Ohio, purchased, through Mind Surf software, a mathematics software program for two of their four middle schools. Each student was given a keyboard at the beginning of class. If the entered answer is correct, the student sees a green light on the keyboard. An incorrect answer lights a red light,…