Mapping Identity Prejudice: Locations of Epistemic Injustice in Philosophy for/with Children

This article aims to map the locations of identity prejudice that occurs in the context of a Community of Inquiry. My claim is that epistemic injustice, which usually originates from seemingly ‘minor’ cases of identity prejudice, can potentially leak into the actual practice of P4wC. Drawing from Fricker, the various forms of epistemic injustice are made explicit when epistemic practices are framed within concrete social circumstances where power, privilege and authority intersect, which is observable in school settings. In connection, despite the pedagogical improvements P4wC offers, some forms of identity prejudice prevalent in traditional classrooms may persist, affecting children who are identified with negatively stereotyped social groups. It is, therefore, important to pay attention to the reality of epistemic injustice and the possible locations where it may potentially surface in the COI. Drawing from my P4wC experience, I show that identity prejudice stems from the intersections of the roles and positionalities of the participants in a philosophical dialogue. These intersections point towards the epistemic relationships of the P4wC teacher, the students, and the P4wC program itself. I conclude that identity prejudice arises circumstantially and/or substantively in P4wC scholarship and practice

INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN EFL TEACHING

When speaking or writing in a foreign language, being grammatically and semantically competent may not be enough to convey the necessary information to the interlocutors in dual conversations or to the readers who read our texts in various genres such as personal letters, formal letters, e-mails...etc., Namely, individuals who use a foreign language in their communications may generate grammatically and semantically well formed sentences or phrases but their sentences and phrases may still not be comprehensible because they fail in highlighting the new information and deemphasizing the old information. Therefore, teaching intonation, sentence stress and pitch as important characteristics of spoken language and teaching how to highlight new information and deemphasise old information when writing a text are of great importance in foreign language teaching. In this article, the concept of information structure is reviewed, examples are given both in Turkish and English and suggestions are made for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classes.  Key Words: information structure, pragmatics, teaching pronunciation

Results and Reasons of Failure at the Secondary Level Examination of Bangladesh Education System: An Empirical Investigation

The aim of this research paper is to look at the results and reasons of failure of the SSC, Dakhil, and Vocational Examinations-2018 under 10 Education Boards in Bangladesh. It would like to unveil the 21st-century Education System of the secondary level. Its aim is to highlight all sorts of Subjects of Humanities, Business Studies, and Science Group at the secondary level. It attempts to investigate the total students of all education boards, reasons of failure, comparative study of pass rate, the number of successful students with GPA-5, and their average percentage of each board. This study would like to focus on the real picture of teachers’ and students’ performance at the secondary level. For this purpose, the current researcher had to complete the survey with the help of 20 participants, including 10 students, 5 teachers, and 5 parents regarding results and failure of the secondary level examination based on questionnaire system at Sristy Central School & College, Uttara, Dhaka. Sources were taken from the selected national dailies of Bangladesh. Teachers, students, and parents were asked to tick the right option out of four about the current education system of the secondary level. Based on their comments, the researcher had to find out the probable means of solution. Moreover, the aim of the paper is to investigate the effective recommendations for learners, parents, and teachers with a view to showing a new dimension of the secondary level education system of Bangladesh.    

Curriculum For Teaching Relative Constructions To Somali-Speaking Learners Of English

The research question addressed in this project was, how do relative constructions in Somali compare to relative constructions in English, what difficulties do Englishlanguage learners have acquiring relatives, and what teaching strategies are most appropriate for these learners? It documents one teacher’s creation of a unit focused entirely around the acquisition of relative constructions, using strategies that have been identified as most effective, such as learning subject relatives and object relatives in sequence and utilizing repeated timed reading. The author provides lesson plans and activities that align with the best practices outlined in the research, with particular consideration given to Somali-speaking students and students with limited or interrupted formal educatio

“Use your frustrations in everything that you write”: Examining Pedagogy of Vulnerability and the Positioning Acts of Undergraduate Writers Situated as Mentors in an After-School Writing Club

Underpinned by positioning theory as both a theoretical lens and methodological tool, this paper asserts that educators can improvise asset-based discourse to create spaces for student writers to exercise agency. This single-case study, focusing on four education undergraduates situated as both writers and writing mentors in a literacy course and after-school writing club with fourth and fifth graders, examined how their identities influenced their current positioning-of-self and other in relation to vulnerability and agency. I conducted positioning analysis of their identity-based poetry, autobiographical short stories, online course discussions, and written reflections. The findings demonstrate that participants who were more comfortable being vulnerable as writers used more asset-based language in their positioning-of-self and other compared to those that were less comfortable being vulnerable as writers. Additionally, undergraduates who felt more comfortable being vulnerable reported finding a new sense of appreciation for revision and acknowledged vulnerability as a challenging but important variable in their cultural identity constructions as writers and mentors. The discourse of course instructors filtered through pedagogy of vulnerability and their critical stances as educational researchers, created agentive positions for undergraduates to embody and disrupt conventional notions of what it means to be a writer and mentor. This study offers insight into two under explored areas, creative writing instruction based on pedagogies of vulnerability and the agentive and linguistic nature of positioning in higher education literacy courses and K-12 classrooms