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- This review outlines the key ethical issues with which visual researchers need to engage, drawing on literature from established visual researchers as well as practical illustrations from current research projects being undertaken within the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM). Its focus is on the ethical issues associated with research using photographs, film and video images (created by researchers, respondents or others) rather than other visual methods. It is intended as an introduction to assist researchers in identifying what ethical issues might arise in undertaking visual research and how these might be addressed. The review commences with an outline of research ethics frameworks, professional guidance, regulation and legal rights and duties which, to varying degrees, shape visual researchers’ ethical decision making. It then goes on to explore the core ethical issues of consent, confidentiality and anonymity and discusses the ethical considerations that these raise with examples of how these can be managed. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the ethical issues raised in relation to the construction and consumption of images. The authors stress the importance of researchers engaging with theories (or approaches) to research ethics in their ethical decision making in order to protect the reputation and integrity of visual research.
- Textuality is often thought of in linguistic terms; for instance, the talk and writing that circulate in the classroom. In this paper I take a multimodal perspective on textuality and context. I draw on illustrative examples from school Science and English to examine how image, colour, gesture, gaze, posture and movement—as well as writing and speech—are mobilized and orchestrated by teachers and students, and how this shapes learning contexts. Throughout the paper I discuss the issues raised by a multimodal perspective for the conceptualization of text and learning context, and how this approach can contribute to learning and pedagogy more generally. I suggest that attending to the full ensemble of communicative modes involved in learning contexts enables a richer view of the complex ways in which curriculum knowledge (and policy) is mediated and articulated through classroom practices.
- The purposes of this article are to position mixed methods research (mixed research is a synonym) as the natura! complement to tradi- tional qualitative and quantitative research, to present pragmatism as offering an attractive philosophical partner for mixed methods re- search, and to provide a framework for designing and conducting mixed methods research. In doing this, we briefly review the para- digm "wars" and incompatibility thesis, we show some commonali- ties between quantitative and qualitative research, we explain the tenets of pragmatism, we explain the fundamental principle of mixed research and how to apply it, we provide specific sets of designs for the two major types of mixed methods research (mixed-model de- signs and mixed-method designs), and, finally, we explain mixed meth- ods research as following (recursively) an eight-step process. A key feature of mixed methods research is its methodological pluralism or eclecticism, which frequently results in superior research (com- pared to monomethod research). Mixed methods research will be successful as more investigators study and help advance its concepts and as they regularly practice it.
- Those familiar with Pennycook’s previous works such as English and the Discourses of Colonialism (1998) or Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction (2001) will not be surprised to learn that this latest volume, co-edited with Makoni and titled Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages, challenges many orthodoxies related to the role of English in the world and the nature of language. As far back as his 1994 book, The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language, Pennycook has been contesting the view that the global spread of English has been a natural, neutral, and beneficial process and has argued against fixation on language as an a priori ontological system in favor of focus on “language use as a social, cultural, and political act” (Pennycook, 1994, p. 29). It is not difficult to imagine that the editors’ collaboration on this volume was inspired in part by a critique Makoni offered of Pennycook’s Critical Applied Linguistics suggesting that in the absence of concrete strategies for engaging and collaborating with local communities, “Critical Applied Linguistics runs the danger of being hegemonic to the very communities it seeks to serve” (Makoni, 2003, p. 135). Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages is also a natural extension of Makoni’s plenary contribution at the 2004 American Association of Applied Linguistics conference in Portland where he proposed a vision of applied linguistics grounded less in an Anglo-American or Western world view, but having greater relevance to a variety of sociolinguistic contexts (Makoni, 2005). Following a forward by Ofelia García, the book is divided into 10 chapters covering the following three areas: the socio-political contexts from which current understandings of language have grown, the way current conceptions of language have limited development of a more nuanced understanding of how people communicate, and the pedagogical implications a language disinvention and reconstitution process might have.
- Ophelia Garcia coins the term ‘Translanguaging’ to describe how multilingual speakers draw flexibly on languages in mixed and blended forms, in multiple cultural and linguistic communities.
- We describe a collaborative project in which university researchers, teachers and Grade 4–5 English language learners (ELLs) investigated the sociohistorical contexts and practices in which the ELLs participate, through a ‘community scan’. Many observers have argued that schools and teachers have such minimal knowledge of the outside- school lives of their multilingual and multicultural students that they are unable to build upon the ‘funds of knowledge’ that students and other members of their communities have. In particular, a large body of recent literature argues that school literacy education should be linked to literacies that children develop in their homes and communities. We present here a study centred on a public school located in a Canadian Punjabi-Sikh community. For our scan we collected census and other demographic representations of the community, as well as media reports and academic literature concerned with Punjabi-Sikh immigration. In addition, our scan included interviews with teachers, principals, parents and community leaders. Students’ investigations and representations of the community and of out-of-school multiliteracies were also collected. The authors argue that such information is crucial in the development of pedagogy that values and promotes the reworking of the practices, images, texts and symbols that children already use.
- In this chapter, issues relating to the digital literacy practices of girls aged from three to eight in both home and school contexts are explored. Since the late 1990s, there have been persistent concerns about boys' achieve- ment in literacy. Here, I argue that these concerns have overshadowed matters that should be considered by educationalists who are committed to gender equity in their classrooms. In this first section of the chapter, the nature of the anxieties expressed about boys and literacy are investigated before data from a number of projects that have focused on children's use of new technologies and related literacy practices are discussed. Three key issues are the focus for reflection. First, I suggest that girls' experiences of literacy across homes and early years settings are not as seamless as is often assumed and that girls as well as boys experience dissonance across these domains. Second, I suggest that there is a need to pay attention to the reductive gendered discourses that are embedded in many of the home literacy practices of girls in order to inform the development of critical literacy curricula. Finally, I consider the way in which initiatives designed to motivate boys through the incorporation of popular culture into the lit- eracy curriculum can reinforce gendered stereotypes and marginalize the out-of-school experiences of girls. This discussion is undertaken within a context in which it is acknowledged that there is a need to move beyond a simplistic binary which fuels the see-sawing debate regarding the achieve- ments of one gender at the expense of the other (Jackson 1998). I would suggest, as do many others, that such a position is an over-simplification of the issues and that we should address the needs of all pupils (Skelton and Francis 2003). However, in this chapter I have chosen to focus on an investigation into the experiences of young girls in the early years because this is where it is often erroneously assumed that literacy transitions from home to school are relatively seamless.
- This essay argues for a paradigm shift in what counts as learning and literacy education for youth. Two related constructs are emphasized: collective Third Space and sociocritical literacy. The construct of a collective Third Space builds on an existing body of research and can be viewed as a particular kind of zone of proximal development. The perspective taken here challenges some current definitions of the zone of proximal development. A sociocritical literacy historicizes everyday and institutional literacy practices and texts and reframes them as powerful tools oriented toward critical social thought. The theoretical constructs described in this article derive from an empirical case study of the Migrant Student Leadership Institute (MSLI) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Within the learning ecology of the MSLI, a collective Third Space is interactional^ constituted, in which traditional conceptions of academic literacy and instruction for students from nondominant communities are contested and replaced with forms of literacy that privilege and are contingent upon students' sociohistorical lives, both proximally and distally. Within the MSLI, hybrid language practices; the conscious use of social theory, play, and imagination; and historicizing literacy practices link the past, the present, and an imagined future.
- Grandparents play a significant role in childcare and one activity that frequently occurs within this context is story-reading. However, relatively little attention has been given to the potential part that grandparents can play in terms of language and literacy development of young children.This article reports on work investigating the interlingual and intercultural exchanges occurring in a home setting in East London. In particular, it focuses on how the traditional heritage pattern of story and rhyme reading by a grandmother of Bengali origin is fused with practices experienced by her six-year old grandchild.The data reveal not only the multiple worlds inhabited by the grandchild during story-reading but also the syncretism of these worlds on a number of levels.This article contributes to the small but growing body of investigation into the reading styles occurring within families from different cultural backgrounds.
- n this paper we address the key issue on which this edition is focused – intel- lectual challenge – in light of Poincaré’s concern with understanding bodies of knowledge – how, over time, they are structured, acted upon, built, and theo- rised in educational settings. We make the case for reinstating the teaching of knowledge, including knowledge about language, at the forefront of consid- erations of educational practice and policy, and, more specifically, of teaching and researching language and literacy. Through this discussion we attempt to contribute to the line of effort rep- resented by contributions to this edition. The authors have taken seriously the fact that the proportion of students from a widening range of language back- grounds other than the medium of instruction in schools in Australia, as in many countries, continues to rise. This presents challenges to educators, and these authors point to fidelity to the intellectual substance and coherence of syllabus contents as the foremost of those challenges. We focus here in particu- lar on extending the two major messages we take from the papers collected in this edition: the need for a clearer articulation, first, of a disciplinarity-based understanding of knowledge, and second, of the relation between curricu- lum knowledge and the language of that curriculum knowledge, as shown in teachers’ knowledge of the nature of language and of how to intertwine the teaching of language with teaching of curriculum knowledge. Australian language and literacy educators, including those whose work appears in this edition, have attained international recognition for the advances they have made in articulating and studying the challenges and opportunities involved in serving all students’ language and literacy needs in rapid-change, multilingual environments (e.g., Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Derewianka & Khan, 2001; Gibbons, 2002; 2006; Gray, 2007). In aiming to extend that view in this paper, we argue: (i) that there is a case for a redirection of focus onto the issueof intellectual challenge; (ii) that the sense of urgency associated with this redirection relates to the loss of a strong conception of knowledge (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2003); (iii) that disciplinarity-based language and literacy educa- tion is critical, in that questions concerning language and literacy develop- ment through the school years are, at base, issues that require some coherent conceptualisation of how it is that each discipline/curriculum domain puts language and literacy resources to work in distinctive ways.
- There has tended to be an overemphasis on the teaching and analysis of the mode of writing in ‘academic literacies’ studies, even though changes in the communica- tion landscape have engendered an increasing recognition of the different semiotic dimensions of representation. This paper tackles the logocentrism of academic lit- eracies and argues for an approach which recognises the interconnection between different modes, in other words, a ‘multimodal’ approach to pedagogy and to theoris- ing communication. It explores multimodal ways of addressing unequal discourse resources within the university with its economically and culturally diverse student body. Utilising a range of modes is a way of harnessing the resources that the students bring with them. However, this paper does not posit multimodality as an alternative way of inducting students into academic writing practices. Rather, it explores what happens when different kinds of ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1991) encounter a range of generic forms, modes and ways of presenting information. It examines how certain functions are distributed across modes in students’ texts in a first year engineering course in a South African university (specifically scientific discourse and student affect) and begins to problematise the visual/verbal distinction.
- On film studies courses, students are asked to treat as objects of study the same films which they may more commonly experience as entertainment. To explore the role of academic writing in this, an action research project was carried out on a university film studies course using a systemic functional linguistics approach. This paper presents a key assessment essay genre, referred to as a taxonomic film analysis. This genre was analysed drawing on the work of Halliday and Mathiessen, 2004 and Martin, 1992 and Lemke, 1985 and Lemke, 1990), focussing on three aspects: the genre acts performed in the process of analysing film; the conceptual frameworks of film studies knowledge, or ‘thematic formations’ (Lemke, 1993) drawn on and re-constituted in the assignment; the particular ways that language is used to perform these acts and build these thematic formations. For EAP to be relevant to film students, it is proposed that EAP specialists need to engage with these three aspects of film study. This application of SFL in film studies EAP is intended as an illustration of how SFL tools can be used for relevant EAP provision across the HE curriculum. Highlights ► The key genre identified was taxonomic film analysis. ► Deploying film studies language and genre converts film into an object of study. ► EAP lecturers need to engage with both the language and the meaning making of film student
- Although the originators of the language socialization (LS) paradigm werecareful to cast socialization as a contingent, contested, ‘bidirectional’ process, thefocus in much first language LS research on ‘successful’ socialization amongchildren and caregivers may have obscured these themes. Despite this, I suggestthe call for a more ‘dynamic model’ of LS (Bayley and Schecter 2003), whilecompelling, is unnecessary: contingency and multidirectionality are inherent inLS given its orientation to socialization as an interactionally-mediated process.This paper foregrounds the ‘dynamism’ of LS by examining processes comprising‘unsuccessful’ or ‘unexpected’ socialization. Specifically, it analyses interactionsinvolving ‘oldtimer’ ‘Local ESL’ students and their first-year teachers at amultilingual public high school in Hawai’i. Contingency and multidirectionalityare explicated through analysis of two competing ‘cultural productions of theESL student.’ The first, manifest in ESL program structures and instruction, wasschool-sanctioned or ‘official.’ Socialization of Local ESL students into thisschooled identity was anything but predictable, however, as they consistentlysubverted the actions, stances, and activities that constituted it. In doing so,these students produced another, oppositional ESL student identity, which cameto affect ‘official’ classroom processes in significant ways.INTRODUCTIONThe socialization of children or novices by adults or experts into particularroles, identities, and world views has been the topic of scholarship for decadesacross the social sciences. Concerning as it does ‘the activity that confronts andlends structure to the entry of nonmembers into an already existing world’(Wentworth 1980: 85), the nexus of socialization research engages suchlongstanding problematics as ‘agent vs. structure’, ‘voluntarism vs. determin-ism’, and ‘macro vs. micro’. Depending on disciplinary origin and theoreticalorientation, emphases have varied in the diverse socialization literature on theinfluence that, for example, society has on the individual, or genetics has overthe environment. Notwithstanding differences in emphasis, however, earlytheories of socialization—from the psychoanalytic tradition of Freud (1939),to the sociological functionalisms of Durkheim (1997) and Parsons (1937),
- In this paper we look at three identity positions salient in research of young people studying in complementary schools in Leicester, a large linguistically and ethnically diverse city in the East Midlands, England. Our discussion of identity focuses on three identity positions: multicultural, heritage and learner. The first two of these are linked to discussions on ethnicity as a social category. We explore the fluidity and stability of ethnicity as a social description in interview transcripts of young people at complementary schools. In addition, the paper explores another, more emergent identity salient in the two schools, that of ‘learner identity’. The research can be characterised as adopting a linguistic ethnographic approach using a team of ethnographers. Data was collected for 20 weeks by four researchers and consists of fieldnotes, interviews and audio recordings of classroom interactions. We consider the importance of ambiguity and certainty in students’ conceptualisation of themselves around ethnicity and linguistic diversity and look at the institutional role complementary schools play in the production of these and successful learner identities. We explore how complementary schools privilege and encourage these particular identity positionings in their endorsement of flexible bilingualism. Overall, we argue that complementary schools allowed the children a safe haven for exploring ethnic and linguistic identities while producing opportunities for performing successful learner identity. Published (publisher's copy) Peer Reviewed
- This article describes a longitudinal ethnographic research project in a Grade 1 classroom enrolling L2 learners and Anglophones. Using a community-of-practice perspective rarely applied in L2 research, the author examines three classroom practices that she argues contribute to the construction of L2 learners as individuals and as such reinforce traditional second language acquisition perspectives. More importantly, they serve to differentiate participants from one another and contribute to community stratification. In a stratified community in which the terms of stratification become increasingly visible to all, some students become defined as deficient and are thus systematically excluded from just those practices in which they might otherwise appropriate identities and practices of growing competence and expertise.
publications (hide)32
- British Educational Research Journal, 33 (5): 703--721 (2007)
- Reading Research Quarterly, 41 (4): 428--460 (2006)
- Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 20 (3): 194--204 (2004)
- Learning, Media and Technology, 32 (3): 303-317 (2007)
- ReCALL, 20 (01): 35--54 (January 2008)
- Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 24 (4): 348--358 (2008)
- Australian Journal of language and Literacy, 31 (2): 155-173 (2008)
- Written Communication, 25 (2): 166-195 (2008)
- Harvard University Press, Cambridge, (1978)
- Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, (2006)
- Longman, Harlow, (2002)
- Routledge, London; New York, (2009)
- Routledge, London; New York, (2006)
- Visual Communication, 1 (2): 171-195 (2002)
- Review of Research in Education, 32 (1): 241-267 (2008)
- Thinking Skills and Creativity, 3 (3): 177 - 191 (2008)Collaborative Creativity: Socio-cultural Perspectives.
- Language Learning, (2013)
- Science Education, 90 (1): 8--43 (2006)
- Science Education, 90 (4): 605--631 (2006)
- The TESOLANZ Journal,, (2005)
