Gesture and Speech in Interaction - 4th edition (GESPIN 4)

International audienceThe fourth edition of Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GESPIN) was held in Nantes, France. With more than 40 papers, these proceedings show just what a flourishing field of enquiry gesture studies continues to be. The keynote speeches of the conference addressed three different aspects of multimodal interaction:gesture and grammar, gesture acquisition, and gesture and social interaction. In a talk entitled Qualitiesof event construal in speech and gesture: Aspect and tense, Alan Cienki presented an ongoing researchproject on narratives in French, German and Russian, a project that focuses especially on the verbal andgestural expression of grammatical tense and aspect in narratives in the three languages. Jean-MarcColletta's talk, entitled Gesture and Language Development: towards a unified theoretical framework,described the joint acquisition and development of speech and early conventional and representationalgestures. In Grammar, deixis, and multimodality between code-manifestation and code-integration or whyKendon's Continuum should be transformed into a gestural circle, Ellen Fricke proposed a revisitedgrammar of noun phrases that integrates gestures as part of the semiotic and typological codes of individuallanguages. From a pragmatic and cognitive perspective, Judith Holler explored the use ofgaze and hand gestures as means of organizing turns at talk as well as establishing common ground in apresentation entitled On the pragmatics of multi-modal face-to-face communication: Gesture, speech andgaze in the coordination of mental states and social interaction.Among the talks and posters presented at the conference, the vast majority of topics related, quitenaturally, to gesture and speech in interaction - understood both in terms of mapping of units in differentsemiotic modes and of the use of gesture and speech in social interaction. Several presentations explored the effects of impairments(such as diseases or the natural ageing process) on gesture and speech. The communicative relevance ofgesture and speech and audience-design in natural interactions, as well as in more controlled settings liketelevision debates and reports, was another topic addressed during the conference. Some participantsalso presented research on first and second language learning, while others discussed the relationshipbetween gesture and intonation. While most participants presented research on gesture and speech froman observer's perspective, be it in semiotics or pragmatics, some nevertheless focused on another importantaspect: the cognitive processes involved in language production and perception. Last but not least,participants also presented talks and posters on the computational analysis of gestures, whether involvingexternal devices (e.g. mocap, kinect) or concerning the use of specially-designed computer software forthe post-treatment of gestural data. Importantly, new links were made between semiotics and mocap data

Machine Scoring of Student Essays: Truth and Consequences

The current trend toward machine-scoring of student work, Ericsson and Haswell argue, has created an emerging issue with implications for higher education across the disciplines, but with particular importance for those in English departments and in administration. The academic community has been silent on the issue—some would say excluded from it—while the commercial entities who develop essay-scoring software have been very active. Machine Scoring of Student Essays is the first volume to seriously consider the educational mechanisms and consequences of this trend, and it offers important discussions from some of the leading scholars in writing assessment.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1138/thumbnail.jp

Finding blind spots:Investigating identity data matching in transnational commercialized security infrastructures and beyond

This dissertation analyzes the interconnections between data matching technologies, identification practices, and transnational commercialized security infrastructures, particularly in relation to migration management and border control. The research was motivated by a curiosity about the intersection between identity data matching and the challenges authorities encounter when identifying individuals, especially the “blind spots” caused by incomplete data, aliases, and uncertainties. The dissertation addresses the following main research question: “How are practices and technologies for matching identity data in migration management and border control shaping and shaped by transnational commercialized security infrastructures?”The dissertation begins by presenting an overview of the literature regarding the connections between data matching technology, which is used across various sectors, and its interrelationships with the internationalization, commercialization, securitization, and infrastructuring of identification infrastructure. This overview highlights a noticeable gap in the understanding of how data matching influences the meaning of the interconnected data and shapes relationships between organizations that use it. To address this gap, Chapter 3 proposes a methodological framework for using data matching as both a research topic and a resource for answering specific sub-questions related to specific aspects of data matching.Chapter 4 emphasizes the significance of data models in information systems for categorizing individuals and establishing connections between different data models for accurate matching. The analysis of this aspect of data matching is made possible by introducing the “Ontology Explorer”, which serves as a novel method for examining the knowledge and assumptions embedded within data models. By applying this method to analyze national and transnational data infrastructures for population management, this method is shown to reveal authorities’ imaginaries on people-on-the-move. In this way, the method demonstrates the importance of data categories in data models, as they are crucial for data matching while also offering valuable insights into how authorities enact people in different ways.Following that, the dissertation investigates how identity data matching is employed to re-identify applicants within a government migration and asylum agency in The Netherlands. Chapter 5 introduces the concept of re-identification, which involves the ongoing utilization and integration of data from various sources to establish whether multiple sets of identity data pertain to a single individual. This chapter uses insights gathered from interviews with personnel from the agency to investigate the integration of data matching tools for re-identification. The chapter shows that striving to minimize data friction in re-identification through data matching can have unintended consequences and additional burdens for the agency’s personnel.Lastly, this dissertation examines the evolution of a commercial data matching system employed for identification and security, adopting a sociotechnical approach. Chapter 6 introduces heuristics that are then used to identify moments that emphasize the design contingencies of the data matching system. Through the examination of fieldwork data collected from the company that created the system, the chapter highlights the reciprocal influences between the system’s design and the actors and entities involved. The system experienced adaptive and contingent changes from a generic data matching system to a specialized tool for identification and security because of such influences. In a broader sense, the chapter brings attention to the interrelationships among software suppliers, integrators, and customers, and the circulation and use of knowledge and technology for matching identity data across organizations

Essays in Blockholder Activism

17. Partnerships for the goal

The Relationship between Professional Development and Teacher Change in the Implementation of Instructional Strategies that Support Elementary Students\u27 Science Textbook Reading

This study examined the relationship between a series of professional development workshops and change in three rural elementary teachers’ science textbook reading instructional strategies. The analysis of the qualitative data indicates the degree of teacher change was related to several inner-related factors: (a) teaching experience, (b) teacher perceptions of self, (c) mode of content delivery, and (d) teacher beliefs. Two teachers with the greatest longevity of teaching experience had previously established instructional strategies and modes of content delivery which did not emphasize student textbook reading skills. Their modes of content delivery were related to their self- perceptions as “science teachers” who provided learning experiences for their students outside of reading the science textbook. The main mode of content delivery for the teacher with the least amount of experience was her students’ reading and comprehending the textbook. This teacher demonstrated the most change in science textbook reading strategy implementation by utilizing a package of informational text reading strategies and gradually releasing the control of strategy application to her students