An examination of processes and structures in oral narrative discourse in an educational context

Thesis: The structures and processes used in narrating are reflective of processes of thought. These processes will determine the grammatical structures selected to represent them. The nature of the story idea is related to the level of commitment to, and involvement with" the telling as social Interaction. Texts: The thesis is based on two texts, the first, an oral narrative telling of an event in family history, and the second, several group constructed endings to a traditional oral tale. Each text consists of several tellings, as well as questioning and discussion of the story. The thesis is in two parts, corresponding to these texts.ArgwmeM:1. The child telling is in dialogue with previous telling voices.2. The child constructs 'history' through a search for meaning at the present time.3. Questions open up spaces in a narrative in which the child works on meaning.4. The child uses language in specific ways to achieve specific narrative outcomes.5. As the narrative develops, further voices from the storying event shape the story.6. The question in the story becomes a tool for realizing thought.7. The nature of the story determines the nature of the thought provoked.8. Stages in constructing a story can represent stages in an argument.9. Thought, as it is realized, may be represented in text.10. The time of narrating Is the time of story innovation and change for the teller

Authentic learning experiences: complementary organizational strategy for academic professional development

There are numerous websites and considerable literature which describe approaches to learning and teaching using a range of technologies in higher education contexts for academic staff. Further, that as academic staff development is increasingly recognized as having an essential role to play in the recasting of ways in which teachers work with students and how students best learn, that this is an area ripe for new consideration. It is the author's contention here, that embracing the role of student, as a lived experience, can assist academic developers in reconsidering and renewing their conceptions of learning and teaching. This could go in some part in informing the practice and processes of academic staff developers in understanding, promoting and supporting flexible learning modes

Future archaeologies : method and story.

This will be an account of an ongoing experiment called 'future archaeology'. Despite it’s name it's not strictly an archaeological experiment, since I’m not an archaeologist. Nor is it strictly scientific, since I’m not a natural scientist. However, it is an empirical experiment: it draws on evidence, it draws on artefacts, it has a method, and is theoretically grounded in critical social sciences, science studies, anthropology, and archaeological theory

THE SHORT FORM RESHAPED: EMAIL, BLOG, SMS, AND MSN IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY E-PISTOLARY NOVELS

Brevity in literature is a complex issue: \u201cshort stories are short in various ways and for various reasons\u201d (Friedman 1994, 18). Telling a short story or telling a story through a collection of short texts are two quite distinct narrative practices, both in designing and writing fiction. Nonetheless, the genre of the short story and that of epistolary fiction share a hybrid nature, a \u201cpower to combine richness with concision\u201d (Shaw 1983, 11), a control over the reader, an inclination for spoken forms, and \u201cthe tension between closural and anticlosural features\u201d (Lohafer 1994, 301). \u201cSeen as a form which arouses a feeling of wonder at finding so much expressed within such narrow boundaries, the short story is an intrinsically witty genre which has affinities with a wide range of artistic strategies for compressing meaning\u201d (Shaw 1983, 11). Twenty-first century e-pistolary novels in book form make the picture even more complex as they are works of fiction of varied lengths, displaying and combining various types of digital and electronic short forms enabled by technological innovation, which started in the mid-90s. Brevity for these collections of e-texts is as much a trait as a technical constraint. Before moving any further, the spelling of epistolarity with a hyphen, i.e. e-pistolarity or e-pistolary novels, is worth a digression. It is a choice intended to highlight the difference between the traditional epistolary genre\u2014a fiction partly or entirely based on a typical paper-based exchange between two or more correspondents\u2014and literary works that consider new forms, modes, and channels of exchange. The novels discussed in this work rely only on text typologies (e-texts) produced by means of new technologies and new means of communication, such as email both via PC and/or mobile phone, texting via mobile phone (SMS), chat services via PC first (MSN) and later via mobile, eBay entries, excerpts from forums and blogs, or online papers and magazines

"Looking behind the veil": invisible corporate intangibles, stories, structure and the contextual information content of disclosure

Purpose – This paper aims to use a grounded theory approach to reveal that corporate private disclosure content has structure and this is critical in making "invisible" intangibles in corporate value creation visible to capital market participants. Design/methodology/approach – A grounded theory approach is used to develop novel empirical patterns concerning the nature of corporate disclosure content in the form of narrative. This is further developed using literature of value creation and of narrative. Findings – Structure to content is based on common underlying value creation and narrative structures, and the use of similar categories of corporate intangibles in corporate disclosure cases. It is also based on common change or response qualities of the value creation story as well as persistence in telling the core value creation story. The disclosure is a source of information per se and also creates an informed context for capital market participants to interpret the meaning of new events in a more informed way. Research limitations/implications – These insights into the structure of private disclosure content are different to the views of relevant information content implied in public disclosure means such as in financial reports or in the demands of stock exchanges for "material" or price sensitive information. They are also different to conventional academic concepts of (capital market) value relevance. Practical implications – This analysis further develops the grounded theory insights into disclosure content and could help improve new disclosure guidance by regulators. Originality/value – The insights create many new opportunities for developing theory and enhancing public disclosure content. The paper illustrates this potential by exploring new ways of measuring the value relevance of this novel form of contextual information and associated benchmarks. This connects value creation narrative to a conventional value relevance view and could stimulate new types of market event studies

How do entrepreneurs learn and engage in an online community-of-practice? A case study approach

This paper investigates the ways in which entrepreneurs use communities of practice (CoPs) to express themselves, using narrative theory and rhetorical analysis, to gain insight into an electronic social network medium, namely, YoungEntrepreneur.com. In particular, the study focuses on CoPs themes, including why entrepreneurs engage in CoPs, what role the moderators and resident entrepreneurs can play in managing online CoPs, on communication rituals of the knowledge sharing through interactivity, and on ‘how to develop an intervention’ to maintain and stimulate entrepreneurs for engaging in an online community. Findings reveal that the topic title plays a major role in attracting people. Successful topics with successful conclusions (in terms of the original query that was answered) will not necessarily get high responses and vice versa. It is observed that the domain expert does not play a big role in keeping the discussion going. Finally, the study also discovered that entrepreneurs like to communicate in a story telling genre. A comprehensive set of engagement measurement tools are introduced to effectively measure the engagement in a virtual CoP, along with a classification to define and categorise discourse of messages in terms of content and context, which allow practitioners to understand the effectiveness of a social networking site

Angels, tooth fairies and ghosts: thinking creatively in an early years classroom

This chapter offers an evaluation and interpretation of the creative thinking and collaboration that took place in a class of five year olds in an English primary school during the academic year 2004–05. This school was committed to developing itself as a creative learning community by participating in a creativity-training programme, Synectics, more usually employed in an adult business context. This school wanted to develop its capacity for creative teaching and learning. This intent was in tune with national and international developments in education where strenuous efforts were being made to extend the reach of creative education which had for a long time been more or less exclusively associated with the arts. The chapter offers an outline of these developments to set the research in context. The research described is a case study and second phase of an evaluation of the project EXCITE! (Excellence, Creativity and Innovation in Teaching and Education) and was carried out by researchers from the Open University. Previous research suggests that when children first start school, they are already competent creative thinkers and storytellers and that both creative and narrative modes of thinking involve abductive rather than deductive inferential reasoning. It is argued that although children may need training in paradigmatic (deductive) modes of thought, they do not necessarily need further training in narrative modes of thought. The examples of young children’s thinking discussed in chapter support this argument. The Synectics creativity-training programme does not claim to ‘teach’ creative thinking per se. The evidence presented suggests that when teachers use Synectics tools and techniques to inform practice, these allow them to create a positive, emotional climate that allows young children to use analogy and metaphor to construct creative explanations and narratives through collaborative discussion