Editorial: Composition in the English/literacy classroom

The act of writing is a complex task. About that, there is almost complete agreement, whether you are a psychologist, a linguist, a socio-cultural theorist, a teacher, or a student battling with an assignment deadline and a blank page. For the emergent writer in the infant classroom, the challenge of communicating in writing is compounded by the sheer effort of transcription – remembering to put spaces between words, shaping upper and lower case letters, marking sentence boundaries with full stops, and representing words in your head as accurately spelled sequences of letters on the page. For the older writer, the complexity persists, though the challenges change. Although transcribing text onto paper or screen may be less effortful, understanding the expectations of the writing task and imagining the needs of the (implied) reader create different obstacles to effortless composition

Producing Goods, Shaping People: The Materiality of Crafting

The study of craft production has a long and venerable history in archaeological research on ancient societies. In this chapter, I consider the crafting of useful and desired things from a materiality perspective by looking at the interactions between the craftpersons, the materials with which they work, and the ways that their end products are valued in society. I use two examples: working with fibers by the Maya of Mesoamerica and with metals by the Moche of Andean South America. These are two very different kinds of materials whose characteristics affect how one interacts with them. Crafting was a part of everyday life for the Maya and Moche. Through these two case studies I illustrate the role crafting plays in the development of identities and personhood, in the process contributing to the meaning of everyday life to people in these societies

Through the eye of a needle: the story of two academics' use of fabric crafts to make defiant messages.

This paper is the result of our joint reflections on our experiences of creating 'quilts' for the January 2007 New Zealand Quilt Symposium, their acceptance in the 'Human Rights (HR) Challenge' (Bella) and the 'Thinking Outside the Square Challenge' (Joyce). In July, Bella, with grace and good humour, succumbed to an aggressive form of cancer. She was adamant that these stories needed to be told and Bella's story is presented below in the original. When seen through the eye of her now stilled needle, her words seem particularly wise and insightful

When you lack the word : stories from parents of children with visual and other disabilities : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Social Policy and Social Work at Massey University

This document, submitted as a Master's thesis, describes a research project carried out during 1994 and 1995. The study arose out of my multiple identity as a parent of two children with a visual disability, as a professional working in the field, and as a researcher. The aim of the study was to find out how parents of children with disabilities cope: what strategies they employ to deal with the situations they face; how they effect the changes they see as necessary for their children and for their families; and what they want from professionals. Research data was collected through unstructured in-depth interviews with six respondents from a group of parents of children with visual impairment. I had access to this national group through membership of it, and was also known to the respondents as a social worker with the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind, of which all the children involved in the study are members. Data for analysis was also drawn from official documents dealing with disability issues, and from current New Zealand disability literature. Research methods were consistent with an emancipatory approach which aims to avoid appropriation and to share power. Strategies were employed which would privilege the stories and characterise the parents as co-researchers in a collaborative exploration of the lives of children with disabilities and their parents. Theory is used in this study to describe and explain what happens in the lives of children with disabilities and their families, and to imaginatively construct what could happen. My conclusions suggest ways in which professionals can support parents by listening to them, and by offering them respect, competence, and caring. I suggest that professionals should be prepared to take some risks and share some of the consequences of current social attitudes towards disability. I conclude that what parents of children with disabilities want is not so much partnership, but alliances with people who will listen to them and support them in their search for opportunities for their children

Editorial for Special issue of ReCALL on Mobile Assisted Language Learning

As in other areas of education where the possibilities offered by mobile learning are being increasingly investigated, there is a growing body of research in the field of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). The collection of papers in this volume addresses secondary and tertiary education, mobile devices and mobility of learners. The authors describe both the successes and challenges they faced, and consider some of the barriers to the adoption of MALL. Sufficient research has been carried out for MALL to have been identified as separate from computer assisted language learning (CALL). Within this special issue, Kukulska-Hulme and Shield provide an overview of studies that have been carried out in the last six years or so, and the move from content delivery to supported collaboration and interaction

Crafting a Paper for Publication

The relationship between doing good research and getting the research published is not a causal one. At best, there is a correlation between the quality of a research paper and its being accepted for publication. A research paper\u27s becoming accepted for publication is ultimately a social process, which exists in addition to and is no less important than the content of the paper itself. In this article, I examine how the social process can influence the crafting of a paper for submission to a journal, and re-crafting it in the event that the journal\u27s editor asks for a revision

Measuring Impact: The Art, Science and Mystery of Nonprofit News

This report seeks to answer the two-pronged question, "What is 'impact,' and how can it be measured consistently across nonprofit newsrooms?" A review of recent, relevant literature and our informal conversations with experts in the field reveal growing ambitions toward the goal of developing a common framework for assessing journalism's impact, yet few definitive conclusions about how exactly to reach that framework. This is especially the case when journalism's "impact" is defined by its ultimate social outcomes -- not merely the familiar metrics of audience reach and website traffic. As with all journalism, the frame defines the story, and audience is all-important. Defining "impact" as a social outcome proves a complicated proposition that generally evolves according to the constituency attempting to define it. Because various stakeholders have their own reasons for wanting to measure the impact of news, understanding those interests is an essential step in crafting measurement tools and interpreting the metrics they produce. Limitations of impact assessment arise from several sources: the assumptions invariably made about the product and its outcome; the divergent and overlapping categories into which nonprofit journalism falls in the digital age; and the intractable problem of attempting to quantify "quality." These formidable challenges, though, don't seem to deter people from posing and attempting to find answers to the impact question. Various models for assessing impact are continually being tinkered with, and lessons from similar efforts in other fields offer useful insight for this journalistic endeavor. And past research has pointed to specific needs and suggestions for ways to advance the effort. From all of this collective wisdom, several principles emerge as the cornerstones upon which to build a common framework for impact assessment