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

Use interactive multimedia to improve your programming course

This paper reports first year students’ experiences with multimedia-based learning for programming and its influence on students obtained from two case studies at Napier and Brunel universities. Engineering students at the universities have taken programming courses from their first year and many have showed difficulties in their learning. The main reason is that it is a very abstract domain, which means that both lecturers and students can have difficulties in explaining and understanding abstract concepts verbally. Considering the strengths of Interactive Multimedia(IMM), i.e. interactivity and visualisation, we decided to use it to improve students’ learning. An empirical study was planned and IMM materials were designed for this. A trial and two case studies were carried out from December 2000 to June 2001. The designed materials were integrated into the curriculum as a teaching aid and self-guided learning materials. The data gathered from the case studies indicated that many students felt the multimedia-based learning helped their understanding of the programming concepts, and some became very motivated in programming. Also, using the interactive multimedia materials for both teaching and learning enhanced students’ learning experience. At last, we found educating both lecturers and students on what is multimedia-based learning prior to a course can increase its effectiveness

Grappling with the complexity of the New Zealand Curriculum: Next steps in exploring the NZC in initial teacher education.

Teacher educators in New Zealand are charged with supporting student teachers' understandings of the New Zealand Curriculum document (Ministry of Education, 2007). Integral to this challenge is the need to provide relevant knowledge and understandings that are contextually and pedagogically appropriate (Fullan, 2007; Jasman, 2003). Aspects of the "front end" of the New Zealand Curriculum document such as the vision, principles, values and key competencies along with the learning area statements need to be understood by newly graduated teachers who will be applying this curriculum in their own classrooms. This paper reports on ongoing research investigating and reflecting on student-teacher understandings of these components of the New Zealand curriculum, on completion of three different compulsory papers within the Bachelor of Teaching degree and Graduate Diploma of Teaching (Primary). Implications for pre-service teacher education and for supporters of provisionally registered teachers are considered

Early years teachers and digital literacies: Navigating a kaleidoscope of discourses

For many young children in developed countries, family and community life is mediated by digital technology. Despite this, for early years educators, the process of integrating digital technologies into classroom practice raises a number of issues and tensions. In an attempt to gain insights from early years teachers, we draw from semi-structured interview data from ten practising teachers which explored their perspectives on digital technologies within their personal and professional lives, and of children’s use of digital technologies within and outside educational settings. Our analysis builds on previous work that suggests that teachers draw on multiple discourses related to conceptualisations of childhood when thinking about digital technology and young children. In this paper we contribute to these discussions, drawing specifically on examples from the data where teachers articulate their understandings of children’s use of digital technology where this relates directly to children’s literacy practices. We assert that narrow conceptualized notions of literacy, compounded by national imperatives to raise print literacy standards, add another layer of discursive complexity that comes to the fore when teachers are asked to provide a rationale for the promotion of digital literacies in early years classrooms. A broader framing of literacy therefore, is needed if the potential of digital technologies in the early years is to be realized

Translation across modalities : the practice of translating written text into recorded signed language : an ethnographic case study

This study creates a space for analysing an emerging translational activity, the practice of translating written text into recorded signed language. With its non-prototypical modality pair of source and target texts, the activity neither matches existing conceptualisations of interpreting nor those of translation modes. In an ethnographic case study I investigate the translational mode displayed, paying particular attention to the translational process designed by the practitioner and the impact of source and target text modalities. Drawing on literacy and multimodality research, this work reaffirms that communication is embedded in social, cultural, historical and ideological contexts and foregrounds the involved (human and non-human) agents. Data generated through observation, interviews and analysis of source, target and preparatory documents reveal an event influenced by the intrinsic properties of text modalities, the translator’s socio-professional background, and socially constructed constraints and opportunities. Developing concepts of “translational practice”, “translational events” and “affordances”, I challenge the prototype-based dichotomy (translation/interpreting) used to conceptualise translational activity. By negotiating data of a non-central practice with theoretical concepts developed within Western Translation Studies, this research contributes to enlarging and de-centralising the discipline. Thickly describing one translational event, conceptualising written-signed translation practice and re-thinking central translational concepts, this study highlights implications for theory, pedagogy and the profession

New approaches to literacy problems: Multiliteracies and inclusive pedagogies

This study investigates the Alternative Certification Program (ACP) students’ motivations to become teachers. Fit-Choice Scale is used. Sample of the study consists of 248 participants in three groups i.e. Health, Sports and Mathematics. Descriptive and inferential statistics, and content analysis are used to examine ACP students’ reasons to want to become teachers, and to investigate differences regarding their primary career choices, age and gender. The results showed that social, intrinsic career and personal utility values are the highly rated motivation factors. Teaching is perceived as a highly skillful occupation and a high status profession by the ACP students. Relationships between ACP students’ motivations and perceptions with their primary career choices, age and gender are identified. Health group had higher motivation for time for family, and Sports group had higher motivation for ability and job security. Mathematics group’s motivation for job transferability, perception scores of salary and social status of teaching profession and career choice satisfaction were lower than the other groups. Yet their perception scores of difficulty was higher than the others. ACP students older than the mean age of 26 had higher scores of self-perceptions of ability, intrinsic career value, job transferability and work with children factors than their young classmates. Significant differences are observed between male and female participants’ motivation of having time for family. Together with contrasting findings and particular similarities with the previous research, these relationships are used to conclude that ACP students themselves have different motivation patterns. Influence of sample characteristics and contextual features are also acknowledged

Embodied Learning and Multimodality in Science Education: Teachers’ Perceptions of Teaching Electrical Circuits, Their Diagrammatic Symbols, Physical Components and Functions Through Multisensory Approach

This small case-study discusses a specific science teaching strategy that has been developed through a multimodal and socio-semiotic lens while drawing on embodied cognition as a pedagogical tool for designing a learning journey to engage students in learning about electric circuits. I have worked with pre-service teachers (PSTs) to use this strategy in their classroom to allow their students to use different senses and modes of communication to engage in knowledge acquisition. The use of movement, sound, imagery and other resources is then linked with real objects and tasks in the science classroom. This type of pedagogical strategy has potential implications for sciences teaching and learning which are explored in this piece. I draw on self-reported answers and semi-structured interviews with PSTs and other former PSTs from our institution who have used this strategy in real classrooms environments. Results show that this strategy has had important impact on PSTs’ perceptions about teaching and learning and pedagogical understanding, as well as achieving a more meaningful engagement of students during and after the lesson, in particular if the teacher is also actively involved in doing the task with the students

Storytelling as a pedagogical strategy for culturally responsive mathematics teaching

This paper reports an intervention study with 60 Primary three students in Hong Kong mathematics classrooms in which the language of instruction (English) was not the first language for neither the teachers nor their students. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of storytelling to develop fraction language and concepts based on the theory of culturally responsive teaching. The pre-test scores of the intervention group was significantly lower than the control group, yet post-test scores showed that both groups performed comparably well. These initial findings suggested that integrating storytelling with a culturally responsive teaching approach can reduce the achievement gap between culturally and linguistically diverse students in rural settings and their peers in urban districts

Language in Language Evolution Research: In Defense of a Pluralistic View

Many controversies in language evolution research derive from the fact that language is itself a natural language word, which makes the underlying concept fuzzy and cumbersome, and a common perception is that progress in language evolution research is hindered because researchers do not ‘talk about the same thing’. In this article, we claim that agreement on a single, top-down definition of language is not a sine qua non for good and productive research in the field of language evolution. First, we use the example of the notion FLN (‘faculty of language in the narrow sense’) to demonstrate how the specific wording of an important top-down definition of (the faculty of) language can—surprisingly—be inconsequential to actual research practice. We then review four approaches to language evolution that we estimate to be particularly influential in the last decade. We show how their breadth precludes a single common conceptualization of language but instead leads to a family resemblance pattern, which underwrites fruitful communication between these approaches, leading to cross-fertilisation and synergies