Excellent Me! Investigating Scholastic Identities and Learning within Discourses of Excellence

Many schools define their educational vision in terms of excellence in achievement for all. This research presents a picture of how one school engages with the discourse of ‘excellence for all’ to produce localised interpretations and discursive constructs of successful learners and successful learning. Embedded in the New Zealand Curriculum (2007), excellence operates as an explicit value to be taught and learnt, a value contingent upon practices of recognition deployed in schools to incentivise and reward students. This thesis demonstrates how the discourses of excellence for all impacted upon the scholastic identities of a group of high-achieving children in one New Zealand intermediate school. I apply a poststructural lens to understand the identity work that the students engage in as they strive for excellence at school. Recognising the potential influence of structural factors in crafting a sense of self, I also employ Bourdieu’s (2010) concept of cultural capital to analyse factors contributing to the valorisation of particular scholastic identities and accomplishments. I employ a qualitative methodology in this thesis, maintaining ethical reflexivity to enable greater ethical symmetry between researcher and participant. For this study, three research activities constituted the inquiry process. The first activity involved a visual presentation created by each of the four participants to illustrate how they saw themselves and their learning. These presentations served as elicitation tools for the second research activity, individual semi-structured interviews. The third research activity asked the students to collaborate on a guide to achieving excellence at their school. Combining a general inductive approach with discourse analysis, I report my findings in two chapters. The first focuses on the role of the school as a ‘producer’ and ‘effect’ of discourses of excellence, and how that shapes students’ identity work. The second considers the emotional labour of students’ engagement with excellence. The students in this study were selected by their school as best placed to demonstrate excellence, yet engaging with discourses of excellence still presented complex negotiations of identity. The students’ perceptions reveal that diverse and contradictory constructs of excellence inform what counts as achievement and who can achieve. When recognition of academic worth is unevenly distributed however, the rhetorical certainty of excellence for all begins to untangle

Excellent Me! Investigating Scholastic Identities and Learning within Discourses of Excellence

Many schools define their educational vision in terms of excellence in achievement for all. This research presents a picture of how one school engages with the discourse of ‘excellence for all’ to produce localised interpretations and discursive constructs of successful learners and successful learning. Embedded in the New Zealand Curriculum (2007), excellence operates as an explicit value to be taught and learnt, a value contingent upon practices of recognition deployed in schools to incentivise and reward students. This thesis demonstrates how the discourses of excellence for all impacted upon the scholastic identities of a group of high-achieving children in one New Zealand intermediate school. I apply a poststructural lens to understand the identity work that the students engage in as they strive for excellence at school. Recognising the potential influence of structural factors in crafting a sense of self, I also employ Bourdieu’s (2010) concept of cultural capital to analyse factors contributing to the valorisation of particular scholastic identities and accomplishments. I employ a qualitative methodology in this thesis, maintaining ethical reflexivity to enable greater ethical symmetry between researcher and participant. For this study, three research activities constituted the inquiry process. The first activity involved a visual presentation created by each of the four participants to illustrate how they saw themselves and their learning. These presentations served as elicitation tools for the second research activity, individual semi-structured interviews. The third research activity asked the students to collaborate on a guide to achieving excellence at their school. Combining a general inductive approach with discourse analysis, I report my findings in two chapters. The first focuses on the role of the school as a ‘producer’ and ‘effect’ of discourses of excellence, and how that shapes students’ identity work. The second considers the emotional labour of students’ engagement with excellence. The students in this study were selected by their school as best placed to demonstrate excellence, yet engaging with discourses of excellence still presented complex negotiations of identity. The students’ perceptions reveal that diverse and contradictory constructs of excellence inform what counts as achievement and who can achieve. When recognition of academic worth is unevenly distributed however, the rhetorical certainty of excellence for all begins to untangle

Assessment of Investment Process for Producing Copper Hollow Spheres

The aim of the present paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of investment process in producing single-cell materials (hollow spheres) from copper alloys. Spheres were formed from Cu 2 O powders by the conventional investment shell mold manufacturing process of investment casting and then reduced to metallic copper hollow spheres in a hydrogen atmosphere. Optimum processing variables such as slurry viscosity were investigated and the mass ratio, hardness, and electrical conductivity of the hollow spheres were evaluated with respect to oxide reduction temperature and ZnO content

Valutazione del ciclo di vita di una lega ECO-MAGNESIUM® prodotta col metodo Green Metallurgy EU PROJECT

La lega AZ31B Eco-Magnesium® (Eco-Mg) è stata impiegata durante il progetto europeo Green Metalllurgy allo scopo di realizzare un processo ad alta sostenibilità. e' stato dimostrato che trucioli di material riciclato possono essere utilizzati direttamente in fase di compattazione a freddo, seguito da estrusione diretta per la produzione diretta di barre estruse semilavorate

Fatigue Characteristic Analysis of New ECO7175v1 Extruded Aluminum Alloy

This paper investigates the fatigue characteristics of a new extruded aluminum 7175, with an experimental composition which uses a magnesium-calcium alloy during the alloying process instead of the standard pure magnesium. This new aluminum 7175, dubbed aluminum ECO7175v1, results in a cleaner manufacturing process and improves mechanical properties. The fatigue behavior of the new aluminum ECO7175v1 T74 temper is investigated. Experimental data show that the fatigue life of ECO7175v1-T74 aluminum can exceed 107 role= presentation style= box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; position: relative; \u3e107107 cycles with a fatigue strength of approximately 207 MPa, about 36% of its tensile strength. Fractography results show that failure modes are predominately ductile near the surface and brittle toward the center. In addition, at higher stresses, crack initiation points are typically at the surface of the specimens, compared with those at lower stresses. Irrespective of the stresses to which the specimens are subjected, all crack initiation points are located at the surface and no inclusions to act as stress concentrators are seen