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This commentary discusses the four papers that comprise the special issue on dialogic teaching and learning, while making general observations that apply across the field as a whole. Similarities and differences are identified over the concepts of 'dialogue' and 'dialogic pedagogy'. The possibility is raised that some aspects of dialogic pedagogy are more tractable than others, perhaps because they are more readily mapped onto traditional practices. The implications of this for analysing the dialogue-learning relation are considered. Attention is paid to the relevance for classroom dialogue of topic, epistemology, multilingualism, and the wider socio-political context. Finally, the challenge of scalability is addressed, in particular the need for cost-effective methods of teacher professional development if dialogic pedagogy is ever to become widely embedded in classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking broadly sociocultural or sociolinguistic perspectives, the five contributions to this special issue investigate various aspects of the co-construction of knowledge, as this is manifested in K-16 classrooms in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. While the authors of these papers address different educational settings, student populations, and curricular content, what unites them is their concern to better understand the cumulative, multidimensional nature of learning and teaching and the ways in which this is enacted in action and discourse across different spaces and over different scales of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies on classroom discourse have challenged the traditional classroom role set and emphasised equal contributions from the participants and the emergence of knowledge through active participation. Co-learning emphasises the process in which teachers and students attempt to adapt to one another's behaviour and learn from each other in order to produce desirable learning outcomes. Current research has paid little attention to the ways in which content teachers and students jointly negotiate new knowledge in bi/multilingual classrooms. Based on data collected from a linguistic ethnography in Hong Kong English-Medium-Instruction secondary mathematics classrooms, this paper uses translanguaging as an analytical perspective to analyse how the EMI teacher and students co-learn in the classroom. The data are analysed using Multimodal Conversation Analysis and triangulated with the video-stimulated-recall-interviews which are analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The paper argues that translanguaging creates a safe space for co-learning that emphasises equity in knowledge construction and challenges the hierarchical relationship between the teacher and the learner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I review ethnography of literacy as a well established,indeed central research methodology in the 'New Literacy Studies'. Starting from Szwed's programmatic 1981 paper, I identify a move away from questions of instruction that had hitherto characterised literacy research towards a focus on literacy use in contexts beyond the classroom. I argue that, despite this apparent shift of gaze away from questions of teaching and learning to questions of use in context, there has been a continued, if at times implicit, orientation to pedagogical questions in a number of these studies. I then go on to review the papers in this theme issue, asking what are their stances, implicit or explicit, to questions of literacy pedagogy? I conclude by arguing that it is time for ethnographies of literacy to re-engage with the question of instruction,understood as situated teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is derived from a wider small-scale study of digital literacy practice that explores the ways in which a multilingual seven-year-old child, Bablu, interacts with his grandmother during Internet activities connected to Qur'anic literacy. The study aims to reveal how intergenerational learning support was given to Bablu by his grandmother. The paper draws attention to how digital technology and the medium of the Internet contribute to children's literacy learning, and the family's contribution to children's literacy acquisition connected to intergenerational practices. Video recording was the main method of collecting data together with ethnographic observation. The video was analysed as visual screen-based multimodal communication that reveals the exchange of teaching and learning taking place between the generations. The study provides further exemplification of the term ‘syncretic’ literacy practices from within multilingual families. In this case, Bablu's intergenerational literacy practices in a multicultural setting were seen as trans-languaging, both syncretic and hybrid. This trans-languaging practice reveals how Bablu uses his bilingual skills in order to construct new hybrid sentences for the purpose of accommodating communication with his grandmother who has very limited ability in the use of English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing diversity of learners and teachers of languages (of both English as an Additional Language or Dialect [EAL/D] and Languages) coincides with major efforts to reconceptualise the nature of additional language learning towards multilingual and intercultural orientations. In this paper I first describe the policy context of EAL/D in Australia, which shapes the reality of EAL/D provision and practices. I then discuss some expansions of key constructs related to additional language learning and the way in which these might inform EAL/D practices. In particular, I focus on the need to consider (a) the mediating role of languages and cultures in language learning, and (b) the need for an interpretive, reflective and reflexive stance towards learning, highlighting how these notions pertain to both student and teacher learning. Next, I discuss examples of teachers' work with students drawn from two case studies of EAL/D practice that explore these notions in a programme of ongoing practitioner research. I conclude by discussing the situatedness of teachers (and their students), the need to consider the personal interpretations of meanings that teachers make and that form their professional learning, and the need for a kind of reflexivity that will lead to the ongoing development of self-awareness as a basis for working in and with diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the learning processes engaged in by staff in educational workplaces, online sites of education and the relationship between local sites of learning and broader policy perspectives.

This paper focuses on teacher-student interaction in two Gujarati complementary school classrooms in one school in the East Midlands city of Leicester, UK. To date, little work has been published on interaction in complementary schools, and little is therefore known about the cultures of learning and teaching in such contexts. Our study of complementary schools in Leicester has shown how the classroom participants manage bilingualism and bilingual learning and teaching. One of the most noticeable features of the discourses of the two classrooms is the way two languages are juxtaposed to create learning opportunities. This uncontested use of two languages through the pedagogic strategy of code-switching goes against the perceived notion of bilingual learning/teaching as being a deficient strategy. Classrooms in complementary schools offer a highly significant, though under-researched, context in which to study language choice, and specifically the multilingual experiences of classroom participants. By exploring the educational pedagogies and classroom discourses, it is the aim of the paper to extend theoretical insights into the way complementary schools might help to transform, negotiate and manage the linguistic, social and learning identities of the participants in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presented in this paper focuses on young people's languaging, or ways-with-being-with-words, including literacies, in everyday practices that stretch across formal and informal learning spaces. Taking sociocultural and ethnographic points of departure, the aim of the study is to investigate aspects of young people's situated and distributed ways of engaging in knowledge production in academic ‘writing’ genres, as well as their agency in relation to pedagogic goals as administered by teachers in these practices. Through analysis of data sets consisting of field notes, video recordings and particularly literacy data, the study presents analysis of three cases of students’ work in project-based learning and instructional tasks inside and outside a ‘bilingual–bicultural’ school setting. The paper puts forth a multi-dimensional analysis of communicative and learning practices and suggests refocusing scholarly interests of ‘multilingualism’ towards an examination of different dimensions of modalities and language varieties in languaging practices. The findings indicate that student agency is central in contributing to the shaping of the nature of their languaging across the interrelated dimensions of time and space. Furthermore, this study suggests that pedagogical practices in language, including literacy, classes need to be transformed and recontextualized in order to embrace student agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dialogic education has become increasingly appealing due to the recognized value of dialogue for the development of students' thinking and knowledge. Yet, its appeal has not catalysed widespread adoption of dialogic education in classrooms due partly to teachers' uncertainty over the conceptualization of dialogic education and the presence of several similar yet different models in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to critically review several well-known models of dialogic education to uncover some of their shared features as well as differences. Four dialogic education models, 'dialogically organized instruction', 'Thinking Together', 'Accountable Talk' and 'dialogic teaching', are reviewed, compared and critiqued. Based on the review, a framework of dialogic education that synthesizes the features of the four dialogic education models and hinges on four components – dialogic environment, teaching goal, classroom talk and dialogic moves – is proposed. This will hopefully help to equip and empower teachers to translate the theoretical principles of dialogic education into actual classroom practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a rich literature on the role of language in learning and on its role in knowledge (co-)construction in the science classroom. This literature, rooted in social semiotics theories and sociocultural theories, discussed research conducted largely in contexts where students are learning content in their first language (L1). In this paper, we draw on concepts from this literature to analyse science lessons in an L2 (second/foreign language) context and discuss how these concepts can be further built on and extended to understand the role of languaging and translanguaging in knowledge (co-)construction and academic language learning in CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) classrooms, where students are learning content in their L2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a study of the photo-sharing website Flickr to examine new online spaces for writing. On this site, people write titles and descriptions for their photos, they annotate their photos with semantic tags, they provide profiles of themselves and they comment on other people's photos. In these activities, people are engaging in new forms of writing and are extending their vernacular practices into new areas. This paper reports on a study which has analysed more than 100 Flickr sites and carried out interviews with 20 multilingual users of Flickr about their online practices. The paper investigates how people learn to participate in these new vernacular writing practices and contributes to theories of situated learning by developing them to take account of learning in online spaces. It focuses in particular on the ways in which Web 2.0 sites provide new spaces for learning and how people undertake deliberate projects of learning. The paper examines the ways in which people talk about the learning they are involved in and the specific discourses of learning they commonly draw upon. This changes over time as people identify new possibilities for themselves on Flickr. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is the `culture of learning' in Chinese complementary schools. The term `culture' refers to the norms, attitudes, values and beliefs of the participants in these schools. Using data collected through multiple research methods from Chinese community schools in Britain, this paper takes a glimpse at cultural negotiation by examining the language choice in these schools. It briefly reviews the situation of learning Chinese as a community language, including outlining the general setting of Chinese schools in the UK. The paper then looks at examples of the language choices of the participants as a result of their cultural language traditions, their experiences and attitudes. It argues that `culture of learning' should be considered not only in classrooms, but also in the wider societal and institutional context. It invites further discussions on community language practices and ideologies in community schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) guidance appears to characterise mathematical language as a set of specialist words with unambiguous definitions, yet analysis of the classroom transcript suggests that at least some mathematical concepts cannot be captured by such definitions. This paper explores the notion of definition within mathematics, considering both school mathematics and the field of academic mathematics research. Extracts of texts from these domains are analysed using tools drawn from systemic functional linguistics. The more advanced texts show definitions to be constructed and used in creative and purposeful ways. This contrasts with the one-to-one word-concept relationship apparent in the NNS guidance and in a text for 'Intermediate Level' secondary students. This finding raises the question of the extent to which the linguistic models implicit in the texts for less advanced school students and their teachers allow students to learn more powerful aspects of mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shape and form of effective teacher--pupil talk has recently become the focus of attention within policy guidelines such as the National Numeracy and Literacy Strategies. Prior to this, research on classroom discourse has established that social context plays an important role in determining the quality of teacher--pupil talk since it directs teachers' and pupils' interpretations of what is said. This paper presents a multi-layered approach to the analysis of whole-class discussions which highlights the impact of wider, institutional and historical aspects of the classroom context on the meanings relayed within interactions. Video and audio data, collected over a five-month period of participant observation in a primary school mathematics classroom, highlights how issues such as teacher expectations and time pressure influence the quality of interactions pupils experience. The paper concludes that teacher--pupil interactions play an instrumental role in determining the social positioning of pupils within the classroom and this has a profound effect on the pupil's access to the learning process. In light of such findings, the potential limitations of establishing and implementing guidelines on effective teacher--pupil talk within policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conducting research into young learner experiences of school poses methodological challenges which are compounded when, as is increasingly the case, the classroom interaction is multilingual and the research methods are participatory. Each new or adapted method sheds further light on the issues that can arise. Researcher-initiated role play is a method where a researcher invites a group of children to engage in role play, something that many young children do spontaneously. This gives children the interactional space to take control of the specifics of the role play and to present their perspectives and concerns through multiple semiotic layers. This paper explores ethical issues that arise when role play reveals familiar but occluded practices; practices that are not readily presented to outsiders. Specifically, when this researcher-initiated role play was used to explore how children in their first years of school learn to read in different languages and in different multilingual, primary school contexts, certain occluded disciplinary practices were revealed. This paper considers the nature of an ethical response to such revelations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language ideologies profoundly shape and constrain the use of language as a resource for learning in 'multilingual' or linguistically diverse classrooms. In this paper, we draw attention in particular to the ideology of languages as stable, boundaried objects and to the colonial invention of African languages. Against this backdrop, we analyse an example of pedagogical practice which was designed in response to a linguistic ethnography of Year 9 Science learning in a South African high school. The aim of this intervention is to move beyond the constraints of current language ideologies and to enable bilingual isiXhosa/English students to use a wide range of resources from their semiotic repertoires for learning Science. We will argue that debates about language of instruction in post-colonial contexts which pit one named language against another, misdirect our attention away from how the resources of language and other semiotic modes are or are not being used for learning in classroom discourse and learning materials. We aim to show how pedagogical translanguaging and trans-semiotising can be taken up as strategies of disinvention and reconstitution of 'language' for learning Science. (195) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although South Africa is committed to a policy of linguistic diversity, the language-in-education policy is still plagued by the racialization of language issues under apartheid and, more recently, by new challenges posed by internal African migration. Drawing on the experience of a school in the Western Cape Province, this paper explores the role of language profiles in a speaker-centered approach to school language policy. Attention is paid to the ways in which the attribution of learners to clear-cut linguistic categories - in this case English and Afrikaans - and their 'monolingualization' within the process of literacy learning are at odds with both their everyday experiences of language and their linguistic aspirations. Using biographic and topological multimodal approaches with 13- to 15-year-old students at the school, it makes a contribution to the growing corpus of research that foregrounds the learner perspective and emphasizes emotional dimensions of literacy and language learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes some key characteristics of two secondary schools that were able to sustain benefits accrued from funded, externally facilitated literacy professional development intervention, during the year after facilitation had ceased. Characteristics that, together, signal a school with the potential to sustain gains in understanding about learning and literacy included the role of key people in building a critical mass community of practice, the theoretical and learner-focused nature of professional learning sessions built around an inquiry cycle, the use of intellectual resources focused more broadly on learning rather than literacy and the use of literacy data to facilitate evidence-based teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literacy has been a crucial aspect of education as a human right for over 50 years, but this basic right remains unassured for at least 700 million adults worldwide. In 1999, UNESCO acknowledged that schools are not making the expected contribution to increasing national literacy rates or providing individuals with the literacy skills they need. The relationship between schooling and literacy is an acute issue in India: the absolute numbers of non-literate adults,many of whom have failed to become literate at school, continue to increase; and high proportions of children are not achieving adequately in literacy at school. The paper presents a socially situated examination, drawing in part on collaborative action research, of how a small sample of primary teachers approach literacy teaching and learning in socio-economic contexts of disadvantage. The paper identifies structural, social and pedagogical constraints to effective literacy teaching and learning in schools and in conclusion, draws out the implications for teacher development of a relative neglect of literacy teaching and learning in Indian vernacular languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes dominant discourses and practices which permeate English language learning and information and communication technologies (ICT). Through the adoption of a critical discourse analytic perspective, and drawing on New Literacy Studies research, it discusses how English language learning and ICT practices have come to take variable forms in the Greek context. The paper argues that, in the light of changing developments at both the European and global levels, the role of 'literacy-learning for progress and development' as a powerful social discourse over the last 40 years has taken on new meaning in contemporary globalised conditions, placing emphasis on English language learning and ICT skills development. Two distinct discourses are identified in these new versions of 'literacy learning for progress'. The first is found mainly in working class and lower middle class families and is about equipping young people with a strong 'portfolio' of formally acquired basic skills and qualifications that will ensure them future employment in the information society. The second, a 'cosmopolitan' discourse, is characterised by a more 'outward looking' or internationalist orientation. The two strands are based on different perceptions of skilling and progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the sociocultural notion of ‘scaffolding’ and the way in which various ‘scaffolding’ strategies support students' learning are examined through classroom data. A distinction is made between scaffolding at a macro level, consisting of a planned, 'designed-in' approach to a unit of work in a subject discipline and the lessons that constitute it, and contingent scaffolding that operates at a micro level or ‘at the point of need’. By drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory it has been possible to articulate the kinds of discourse and multimodal strategies that constitute the nature of scaffolding and then examine the ways in which these function in the discourse to support student learning in the local and immediate context. In addition, this paper identifies an Induction genre that provides foundational understandings about the study of history for apprentice historians. This is supported by two post-foundational lessons that form a Macrogenre. This Macrogenre reinforces the application of focus questions that are fundamental to historical study and an approach to answering these questions that is consistent with the methodology of the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on observation data from 54 teaching episodes in Year 2 and Year 6 whole-class teaching. It describes the findings of the analysis and illustrates how `interactive', whole-class teaching is characterised by questions requiring predetermined answers. Speculative questions, which invite opinions, hypotheses and imaginings, or process questions, which invite children to articulate their understanding occupy little of the classroom talk arena. Despite national initiatives to develop greater use of whole-class teaching with higher levels of interactivity, teachers use questioning to maintain control and to support their teaching, rather than pupil learning. The paper raises important issues about the nature of interactivity in whole-class teaching and about the role questions play in supporting and extending pupils' learning experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to contribute a sociocultural theoretical perspective for the creative identity work involved in the ongoing process of learning and using literacies. Drawing on anthropological theories of identity formation, I argue that people employ cultural resources, such as cultural artefacts, to develop new identities and literacies. I illuminate these processes by drawing examples from interviews with adult literacy students in Brazil and current literature in sociocultural studies of literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report findings from the second year of a three-year research and professional development program designed to help elementary school teachers engage in dialogic teaching to support the development of students' argument literacy. We define argument literacy as the ability to comprehend and formulate arguments through speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The professional development program was focused on promoting teachers' use of a specific type of talk called 'inquiry dialogue' to achieve the goal of developing students' argument literacy. We used a single-group pretest-posttest design to assess the impact of the professional development on teachers' epistemological beliefs and their enactment of inquiry dialogue in text-based discussions. Our analyses of videotaped discussions at the beginning and end of the year showed that there were substantial improvements in teachers' facilitation of inquiry dialogue and in the quality of students' argumentation during discussions. Contrary to expectations, however, there were no changes in teachers' epistemology; teachers' beliefs about knowledge and knowledge justification remained at a relativist stage throughout the course of the program, suggesting that teachers continued to view all opinions as equally valid and regard arguments and the use of reasons and evidence as idiosyncratic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including dialogic pedagogies, student voice and dialogic interaction.

Dialogic pedagogy is widely viewed as an excellent means of educating students for civic participation in deliberative democracy. While many intervention-based studies have researched dialogic teaching and learning, we know very little about the enactment of dialogic and related ideas 'in the wild,' in regular classrooms. This paper contributes to the naturalistic study of dialogic pedagogy through close examination of an episode of sustained student engagement with, and argumentation about, a controversial social issue in an Israeli primary school classroom. In particular, we focus on the emergence and interaction of voices, defined as (1) opportunity to speak, (2) expressing one's own ideas, (3) on one's own terms and (4) being heeded by others. While the norm in Israeli classrooms is exuberant, voiceless participation, in the rare classroom episode examined here, we find students - and their teacher - engaged in heated, multivocal deliberation. We follow the struggles of marginalized students to be heard and heeded, exploring the conditions which ultimately allow for the actualization of student voice, and the accompanying pedagogical challenges and dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers in complementary schools are often assumed to be using outmoded teaching strategies and an authoritarian approach to discipline. However, it is rare for mainstream teachers to have visited these community-run after-school or weekend classes, which remain on the margins of educational provision. This paper argues that complementary teachers’ knowledge has been ‘doubly devalued’: firstly because of their location in the informal learning sector, and secondly because their work focuses on languages and cultures that are ignored or viewed negatively by the wider society. Our action research study with complementary teachers in East London challenges mainstream preconceptions in showing the creative range of teaching strategies devised to meet the needs of multi-level, mixed-age classes in under-resourced conditions. Uniquely, the research set up partnerships between these complementary teachers and local primary school teachers, in which they visited each other's settings and jointly planned topic-based lessons adapted to each context. Findings demonstrate that mainstream teachers had much to learn from their complementary colleagues about negotiating teacher–student relationships, the child as independent learner and as leader within a learning community, and the use of bilingual strategies. Partnership teaching created mutual respect for each other's expertise, crucial to the equal valuing of shared knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of African languages in formal and nonformal learning is the subject of increasing local, national and international interests. Cognitive and pedagogical reasons abound for using the language best understood by the learner. However, many nonpedagogical factors related to politics, economics, language attitudes and colonial history are also extremely influential as decisions are made regarding language of instruction. Among the various stakeholders in this issue of language choice for education, an important interest group is the African elite. Members of the elite are able to access resources, marshal arguments that promote their values and ultimately influence the formulation and implementation of policy in ways that the average local community member cannot do. This paper examines the influence of international, national and local contexts upon the perspectives of the African elite where language and education are concerned. It argues that organized, intentional action by concerned members of the African elite can have significant impact on language-and-education choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The voices of the main stakeholders in literacy and schooling - pupils and parents - have seldom been given adequate space in studies of school and classroom discourse in sub-Saharan Africa. The present paper attempts to redress this imbalance by presenting the voices of pupils from a multilingual urban primary school in Ghana and of parents from a rural bilingual school in Zimbabwe. The Ghanaian study highlights challenges associated with using an unfamiliar language, English, as the medium of instruction, selective teacher treatment in the classroom that leaves some children lacking confidence to participate and the strong influence of the home environment and other socio-economic conditions. The Zimbabwean study highlights what happens when parents are allowed a voice in their children's education. It is argued that pupil and parent perspectives can validate the findings of existing research, deepen our understanding of classroom interaction and, in some cases, challenge conventional wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that an understanding of the role of language and literacy in learning disciplinary content should be a key component of the pedagogical content knowledge covered in the preparation of high school teachers. I identify three components of this 'literacy pedagogical content knowledge' (LPCK): knowledge about how spoken and written language can be best structured for effective learning; recognition that subject areas have their own characteristic language forms and hence entail distinctive literacy practices; and capacity to design learning and teaching strategies that account for subject-specific literacies and language practices. I outline how this concept of LPCK has been incorporated into a teacher education program, focusing on prospective teachers' reflections of how spoken language in their high school classrooms contributes to the more literate forms of reasoning valued in various subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educators generally are concerned with testing what learners know by means of written tests, as if knowledge was some intrapsychological thing or state that could be translated and externalized into some interpsychologically available inscription that is a more-or-less accurate approximation of what the person knows. In such endeavors, language is used as a fixed representational means to achieve the interpsychological representation. Carefully conducted design experiments show, however, that knowing and learning are distributed - and therefore contingent processes - across different temporal, spatial, and social scales, which raises questions about the nature of the knowledge exhibited in various situations and forms. In this paper, I problematize the question of what spoken language specifically - and communicative acts more generally - tell us about knowing, learning, and development. I propose a different way of theorizing and analyzing what people think in action, and the ideas and concepts they mobilize. I articulate a set of propositions about knowing, which I exemplify in a careful look at a randomly chosen lecture episode from a university physics course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While educational theorists have long debated the pedagogical value of granting students the authority to construct certain of their own understandings in collaboration with their peers, a lack of empirical markers of student 'interpretive authority' has constrained comparative study of the pedagogical tradeoffs at stake. Yet the thoughtful nurture of collaborative knowledge construction processes must represent an essential aim of democratic schools, which are charged with the responsibility of adequately preparing students to participate fully in democratic life. This paper offers a conceptualization of interpretive authority based on an extrapolation of the traditional initiation/response/feedback coding sequence and other reliable discourse measures. The discourse patterns of six pedagogically diverse preparatory school classrooms in the United States are employed to illustrate a range of authority balances within respected classroom practices. A five-part frame for the practical characterization of interpretive authority within classrooms is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author shares findings from a qualitative study of white, monolingual preservice teachers enrolled in a sociolinguistics course that examines the interplay of language and ethnicity in the United States. The primary aims of the study were to learn more about the preservice teachers' awareness of their cultural and linguistic backgrounds and to explore how they felt their new understandings about linguistic diversity would impact their future practice as teachers. In this paper, the author examines the cultural and linguistic identity work of two white, monolingual preservice teachers initiated by their participation in this course. Findings from interview and archival data suggest that while teacher education grounded in sociolinguistic research and principles can impact teachers' attitudes and practices towards linguistic diversity, teacher education that engages a critical approach to understanding language and ethnicity can encourage teachers' interrogation of their own cultural and linguistic location and challenge dominant standard language and colour-blind ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been increasingly recognised that classroom discourse plays an important social role as a semiotic mediator of knowledge construction with respect to curriculum content. The assumption is that through active verbal engagement with a topic of interest, students are enabled to master the modes of language use associated with schooling - the various genres and registers specific to the different school subjects. In this conceptual position paper, we examine how appropriate these assumptions are in the case of school-aged English as additional language (EAL) learners who are learning English as the language of instruction. In the first part, we will make the case for the importance of dialogue in learning, both first and second languages and the need for an inquiry orientation to the curriculum in order to promote dialogic interaction. In the second part, drawing on examples from our research, we will present three instantiations of dialogic inquiry involving EAL learners in elementary and intermediate grades and discuss issues concerning dialogic inquiry and second language learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research suggests that young ESOL learners in mainstream English-medium classrooms are afforded limited opportunities to engage with curriculum content. This paper reports on a study of a five-year-old boy from Samoa who was just beginning to learn English in a mainstream New Zealand classroom. Interactions between the boy and his teacher and English-speaking peers are analysed for evidence that he was learning ‘hospital’, a central concept in a social studies curriculum unit. The analysis shows that, while this was a language and resource rich classroom, affordances of ‘hospital’ were not consistently accessible to the boy. He did begin to attend to the word ‘hospital’, but there is little evidence that he engaged with the concept. However, noticing the word is a step towards learning its meaning, and it was in interactions with his teacher that he attended to the word, not in interactions with his peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a study of teaching and learning strategies co-constructed by peers in a Spanish/English dual language first grade classroom. Grounded in sociocultural theory and developed using ethnographic approaches to data collection and analysis, the study analyses the children's mediation of their own and each other's language learning within and across languages, focusing on strategies that support learning. The strategies are analysed within the context of teaching/learning interactions in a Dual Language Programme with attention given to the children's ongoing negotiation of the linguistic roles of novice, expert, and dual language expert when working in mixed groups in the English and Spanish classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of an ongoing study of discursive behaviour both at home and at school. The overall goal of the analysis presented was to explore the level of dialogicity (Linell, 1998) manifest in Israeli classrooms. This quest was motivated by a sociocultural inclination towards learning, which places instructive dialogue at the core of successful teaching and learning. The question this article addresses is, what are the different types of teacher-student interaction prevailing in the classroom, and how do they affect ways of making meaning? Three main genres of classroom discourse were identified, differing in the degree of their dialogicity: Socratic dialogue - a topical discussion where the final text is created by students and teacher in concert, pseudodialogue - in which the students are made to believe they are engaged in a topical discussion while being assessed on grounds of interpersonal relationships and mode, and monologue in the guise of a dialogue - in which the teacher asks topical questions while seeking the reproduction of her own text. The two latter ones were found to be dominant in the classes we observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores what kinds of advantages and strengths the process of learning to read simultaneously in different languages and scripts might bring about. It is based on a socio-cultural view of learning and literacy and examines early literacy in three parallel literacy classes in Watford, England. It analyses the learning experiences of five bilingual children who are of second or third generation Pakistani background. At the start of the study the children are five years old and they attend the same school and class. They learn to read in English during their daily literacy hour lessons; their home language is Pahari . They attend weekly Urdu lessons that take place in a community language school. They also learn to read in classical Arabic - in a language they do not speak or understand - in their daily Qur'anic classes and, typically, in the local mosque. The data shows that the children learn to switch between three literacy systems. They talk about their literacy learning in terms of `how you got to do it' and `do it properly', which varies from class to class. They use a different range of learning strategies in establishing how to read with meaning. Rather than finding these - or the different related languages and scripts - confusing, they have a powerful impact in enabling the children to see literacies as systems that change and that can be manipulated. This kind of analytical approach of understanding `proper' reading is based on the children's varied experiences of parallel literacy classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, very few empirical studies can be found on primary, especially lower primary school pupils' use of language learner strategies. The few studies that exist often employ research techniques such as questionnaires and think-aloud protocols as studies on adults do. However, we know very little whether the research methods commonly used with adult learners can be applied to lower primary school pupils (grades 1-3). Practically no published study in this area reports the problems associated with eliciting language learner strategy data from children. In addition, not much is known about whether children as young as primary one can be differentiated in terms of learner strategies they use in completing language tasks. This paper shares the problems that we encountered in eliciting strategies from lower primary school pupils in Singapore and presents some preliminary findings on these learners' use of language learner strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sales of manga or Japanese comics dominate the publishing market in Japan. Manga cater for a wide variety of readers, ranging from children's comics to adult pornography. In this paper, we focus on adolescent readers and describe patterns of learning to read manga. The findings demonstrate the importance of belonging to a community of readers since this community enables readers to share ideas and provides a resource for developing reading skills. These skills are self-taught, developed outside the classroom, since the reading of manga is generally frowned upon in most schools. Being aware of how actively adolescents read manga as well as of the kinds of skills needed to understand these texts would provide teachers with a deeper understanding of their students' reading skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study on thinking and learning processes of mathematics and science in teaching through a foreign language, in Finland. The entity of thinking and content learning processes is, in this study, considered as cognitional development. Teaching through a foreign language is here called Content and Language Integrated Learning or CLIL. CLIL refers to all those diverse programmes, including some forms of immersion and bilingual education, where a foreign language is a medium of instruction, affecting the entire learning process of the learner. Thinking and content learning in CLIL manifests itself as analogical CLIL reasoning systems, based on two languages, and is assumed to affect cognitional development. Cognitional development was studied with 669 Finnish mainstream L1 learners aged 7-15 in the public comprehensive school. The experimental group, 335 learners, was taught through English, French or Swedish. The experimental group was compared with a control group of 334 learners, taught through the mother tongue, i.e. Finnish. Cognitional development was studied in terms of of individual concepts and conceptual structures that are here called meaning schemes. The results of four measurements in 2002-2003 are presented in which statistical differences were found between the experimental and the control group in cognitional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the nature of literacy practices in online distance learning environments, specifically those involved in text-based collaborative discussion at post-compulsory level. A three-dimensional framework, relating operational, cultural and critical aspects of linguistic interaction online, is used to argue that research in this field needs to take account of wider institutional and social contexts if it is to address issues of student resistance to socialisation into virtual learning communities. Some methodologies for research of this kind are discussed, and sample analyses of participant interaction on UK Open University Masters courses are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a meta-analysis of theory and research about writing and writing pedagogy, identifying six discourses--configurations of beliefs and practices in relation to the teaching of writing. It introduces and explains a framework for the analysis of educational data about writing pedagogy in which the connections are drawn across views of language, views of writing, views of learning to write, approaches to the teaching of writing, and approaches to the assessment of writing. The framework can be used for identifying discourses of writing in data such as policy documents, teaching and learning materials, recordings of pedagogic practice, interviews and focus groups with teachers and learners, and media coverage of literacy education. The paper also proposes that, while there are tensions and contradictions among these discourses, a comprehensive writing pedagogy might integrate teaching approaches from all six. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, on the unit measuring time, examines classroom use of different resources and their affordances for students' meaning-making. The data, comprising audio and video recordings, fieldnotes, photographs and student texts, were collected during a lesson in a multilingual Swedish grade 5 classroom (students aged 11-12). In order to analyse the connections between the different resources, such as talking, modelling, using bodily action and practical equipment, reading and writing, and their affordances for meaning-making, we use pedagogical link-making, Dewey's principle of continuity and Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics. Findings show that in using these multiple resources, the teacher builds a web by linking various modes of representation, affording the multilingual students several opportunities for making meaning of the science content. Talk holds the prominent position and is linked to the other mediating resources, which in turn are linked to each other in all possible constellations. Science content is hereby mediated and reinforced through the web of multiple resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine a faith teacher's reflections on faith literacy teaching and learning and how they shaped his pedagogy in the context of Hindu/Saiva religious instruction classes for students of Sri Lankan Tamil heritage. The data are part of a larger multi-site three-year team ethnography of children's faith literacy learning in places of worship, religious education classes and homes across four ethno-linguistic communities in London (Bangladeshi Muslim, Polish Catholic, Ghanaian Pentecostal and Tamil Hindu/Saiva). In this article, we focus on one of the Hindu/Saiva faith teachers by combining an in-depth semi-structured interview with the teacher in question with participant observations and video-recordings of faith lessons. Drawing on the faith teacher's reflections, we identify the changes in the nature and scope of faith literacy learning across time and in the London diasporic setting and demonstrate how the faith teacher responded to them by adopting flexible language practices where English (the majority language) was used alongside Tamil (the community and devotional language) as a learning resource. The faith teacher's pedagogic approach emerged as a pragmatic and contextual response to the students’ diverse capabilities in class, with the purpose of making faith literacy learning accessible and relevant to their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The writer argues that there are significant gaps in the way in which academic literacy theory has been conceptualised in the South African context. Although there has been much research about the transition from school to university, school literacy has tended to be presented as self-evident and the implications of students studying in an additional language, English, have tended to be addressed in functional terms. This paper uses insights from a critical ethnographic study of English in an urban, black working-class secondary school to describe the instrumental literacy practices that characterise English classes at the school. The data suggest that students are deeply ambivalent about English. I argue that their seemingly contradictory language attitudes and classroom practices are intimately linked to their attempts to define appropriate roles and identities in relation to the unstable school and township environment, as well as their construction of their place in the world within and beyond the township environment. The data illustrate the need for academic literacy intervention to take into consideration students' language attitudes and motivation, as well the need for subject-specific knowledge of school discourse practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the intersection of discourse, pedagogy and gender identification in primary school classrooms. More specifically, it uses illustrative findings from a larger study to examine boys' and girls' discourses in learning and friendship groups in the classrooms of two demographically similar but pedagogically different primary schools. It warns against seeking simple solutions to complex questions about which pedagogies suit boys or girls best. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addresses the commonly acknowledged challenge of globalization with respect to the area of English language teaching and more particularly, teaching English to speakers of foreign languages. Discussion on the notion of English as an international language and the question of ownership of such a language; Roles and defining characteristics of the native and non-native speaker of English; Review of the various occasions when communication and learning take place.

The few studies conducted to date on the affective dimension of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) have predominantly focused on the relationship between motivation and language attainment, which points to a need for further investigation. To this end, this cross-sectional study aims at researching the degree of correlation between motivational variables and content learning achievement. With that goal in mind, discriminant and correlation analyses were performed with the motivational variables scrutinised (willingness and self-esteem, self-demand, anxiety and lack of interest) to determine to what extent such motivational variables may influence and account for the variance of student performance results in the subject of natural science obtained by the experimental (CLIL) and control (non-CLIL) groups at the end of primary and secondary Education. Contrary to expectations and the reviewed literature, the findings of the study revealed a low correlation between the motivational variables scrutinised in the study and content learning achievement in CLIL programmes. It was also found that not all motivational variables exert the same effect on the CLIL learners' content achievement which may be affected, to some extent, by the influence of both self-demand and lack of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]