Investigates the cultural and gender variations in the use of metadiscourse among U.S. and Finnish university students. Describes and analyzes the findings. Provides evidence for the universality of metadiscourse use and proposes more cross-cultural studies of metadiscourse. (HB)

Explores the themes of accommodation and resistance in stories of autobiographers' early schooling, illustrating how educational autobiographies enhance understanding of childrens' normalization experiences in school. The essay examines conceptual components of normalization, outlines discursive problems of the autobiographical genre, and analyzes…

Presents a characterization of students' comments during observation of meal worms or brine shrimp. Finds that many student comments had to do with sex, reproduction, death, violence, and the life history of the organisms. Significant differences in conversations occurred across age and gender groups. Contains 32 references. (Author/WRM)

Offers a critical discussion on the issue of educational standards by (1) clarifying issues surrounding educational standards, (2) critically examining the assumptions underlying popular discourse about standards, and (3) offering and arguing for an alternate perspective based on democratic ideals. Discusses the impact of this on classroom…

In this article we analyze the intersections and disjunctures between everyday (home, community, peer group) and school funds of knowledge and discourse (Gee, 1996) that frame the school-based, content area literacy practices of middle school-aged youth in a predominantly Latino/a, urban community of Detroit, Michigan, in the United States. Using…

On-line comprehension studies of flexible word-order languages find that noncanonical ("scrambled") structures induce more difficulty than canonical structures [e.g., Hyona & Hujanen, "Q. J. Exp. Psychol." 50A (1997) 841-858], with this difference being attributed to the structural complexity/infrequency of these forms. However, by presenting…

This paper examines two types of discourse in which teachers engage when discussing case studies based on classroom episodes, and the ways in which the availability of video data of these episodes may motivate a shift in the mode of discourse used. We interviewed two pairs of secondary school mathematics teachers after they had read a case study…

This article examines the potential of a critical approach to language as a new dimension of transforming school cultures and making them more coherent with purported equity and social justice goals. The literature review shows that the latest waves of school reform in the USA have done little to change patterns of student achievement based on…

In this paper, the authors depict performance ethnography as having multiple ethical dimensions and multiple implications for the relationships between the evaluator and program participants. They have found performance ethnography to be essentially an intimate form of representation that has tremendous implications for the ownership of…

Rhetorical scholarship criticizes melodrama for its tendency to simplify and reify public controversies and valorizes the comic frame as an ethically superior mode of rhetoric. These judgments are rooted in the discipline's reliance on Burkean categories, a reductionist conception of melodrama, and an implicit assumption that social unification…

A study examined the influence of mode of discourse, experiential demand and gender on quality of student writing. All of the eighth-grade students (125,756) who participated in a statewide assessment of writing during spring 1989 and spring 1990 were included in the study. Eighteen writing tasks were administered during these two years. The…

For those involved in research of any type, the gathering of complete, relevant, and untainted information is the ultimate goal. The collection of valuable information is particularly challenging in the social sciences, which often call for qualitative field research. The effective field research interviewer must not only be knowledgeable of the…

At Massachusetts Bay Community College a course was designed to create a transition from the process-based basic writing course to the traditional required freshman English course. WTG 100 was designed as an inquiry into academic writing, where students would learn about the various discourse conventions and expectations they would encounter as…

Used a genre-based research methodology to determine the rhetorical organization of the introductions and endings of English language essays and to identify correlations between linguistic features and the functions they perform. Findings indicate that essay introductions and conclusions exhibit clearly identifiable generic discourse and…

Reports a study that examined the use of story in an adolescent development course, reviewing the methodology employed, the problematics of storytelling in teaching, and the three patterns of storytelling that emerged. The discussion highlights the role of storytelling as a way of expanding experience and the analysis of experience for beginning…