Gender Construction in Malaysian Children’s Literature

The present study explores the construction of gender in a selection of Malaysian children’s literature texts in the English language. An examination of the ways in which male and female social actors are constructed in these texts uncovers the subtle gender-based messages that they inherently contain. This is important to know because young Malaysian children reading these stories are also building sociocognitive schemas about their gender identity and roles in society. The content analytic method of liberal feminist researchers has been a popular method of evaluating the representation of male and female characters in children’s stories. Such research has served to reveal, among others, imbalances in the number of male and female characters found in lead roles and in illustrations. The present study adds another dimension to the reading of gender in children’s literature. In addition to looking at gender through a content analysis of surface level features, the way in which the various characters are linguistically and visually constructed is also examined. It is for these reasons that Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is adopted as an approach to reading gender construction in children’s literature. CDA is an approach that looks at how power imbalances are played out through choices made in language use and related semiotic resources. Four methods of analysis are relied upon and they are content analysis, lexical analysis, transitivity analysis and visual analysis. It is the researcher’s contention that each method contributes to a comprehensive framework for reading gender in children’s literature. The findings of the content analysis revealed significant imbalances in the distribution of female and male social actors, both in the roles that they played and their appearances in the accompanying illustrations. In both cases, males outnumbered females. Practices of stereotyping were found in the distribution of the characters in the various settings. While the home setting appeared established as a feminised space, the workplace and outdoor settings were dominated by males. The content analysis also pointed towards stereotyping practices in the way female and male characters were ascribed behavioural traits and status in society. The association between gender and behavioural trait appeared to firmly establish power in the hands of the male characters. In the next stage of analysis that focused on both written and visual language, strong nuances of sexism were identified in apparently neutral texts, revealing a weaker construction of females. The analysis of lexical units and clauses revealed deeply embedded linguistic structures that positioned males as predominantly more powerful than the female characters. The visual analysis focused on the roles the female and male characters took on in the illustrations and it was again found that male characters were accorded the more important roles of active doer while females took on the role of passive observer.An analysis of language, both written and visual, which is grounded in CDA, offers researchers and decision-makers in the selection of texts for children greater insights into the way gender is subtly constructed. As such, the present study proposes that language should be accorded greater attention in the evaluation of gender construction in children’s literature or in literary texts produced for children

Spin Freezing in the Spin Liquid Compound FeAl2O4

Spin freezing in the $A$-site spinel FeAl$_2$O$_4$ which is a spin liquid candidate is studied using remnant magnetization and nonlinear magnetic susceptibility and isofield cooling and heating protocols. The remnant magnetization behavior of FeAl$_2$O$_4$ differs significantly from that of a canonical spin glass which is also supported by analysis of the nonlinear magnetic susceptibility term $\chi_3 (T)$. Through the power-law analysis of $\chi_3 (T)$, a spin-freezing temperature, $T_g$ = 11.4$\pm$0.9~K and critical exponent, $\gamma$ = 1.48$\pm$0.59 are obtained. Cole-Cole analysis of magnetic susceptibility shows the presence of broad spin relaxation times in FeAl$_2$O$_4$, however, the irreversible dc susceptibility plot discourages an interpretation based on conventional spin glass features. The magnetization measured using the cooling-and-heating-in-unequal-fields protocol brings more insight to the magnetic nature of this frustrated magnet and reveals unconventional glassy behaviour. Combining our results, we arrive at the conclusion that the present sample of FeAl$_2$O$_4$ consists of a majority spin liquid phase with "glassy" regions embedded.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figs, 2-column, Accepted to Phys. Rev.

Leveraging knowledge in higher education organizations

Knowledge has become the key resource in the present post-industrial society.Organizations around the world are now required to cleverly manage their biggest assets: their knowledge capital, in order to gain competitive edge in the complex and dynamic environments confronting them.In Malaysia, the K-Economy Master Plan was launched in September 2002 to drive the nation towards this new imperative and various initiatives are now underway.As a result of these initiatives, the demand for education and training is expected to increase in the near future and beyond. Higher Education Organizations (HEOs) in the country are confronted with the challenge of meeting these needs.To cater for this, HEOs must first begin to manage their most valuable asset: their knowledgebase.Managing this requires a concerted and structured effort in implementing Knowledge Management (KM).But the problem is that leaders at various levels in many of our HEOs are still struggling to make sense of the KM imperative.It is thus proposed that, as a first step in implementing KM, leaders in HEOs consider the following variables: identify the knowledgebase; identify how knowledge is created, shared and used, identify the role of information and communication technology (ICT); identify an appropriate ICT system; and identify appropriate people management strategies. This paper reports the findings of an inquiry undertaken at two HEOs, one public and the other private, via interviews with academics, in identifying the key features of the variables stated above

A critical reading of gender construction in Malaysian children's literature

Children's literature is an important resource for knowledge construction among young children. As they read the stories or have the stories read to them, children are presented with multiple ideologies and belief systems and this includes notions of masculinity and femininity (Taylor, 2003: 301). These ideologies are absorbed by young children and go on to influence their attitudes and behaviour as they participate in society. Perhaps for this reason, the reading of gender in children's literature has been an area that has drawn the interest of numerous researchers over the decades (Bender and Lach, 1990; Collins, Ingoldsby & Dellman, 1984; Crabb & Bielawski, 1994; Dellmann-Jenkins, Florjancic & Swadener, 1993; Desai, 2001; Dutro, 2002; Gooden & Gooden, 2001; Kortenhaus & Demarest, 1993; Oskamp, Kaufman & Wolterbeck, 1996; Poarch & Monk-Turner, 2001; Turner-Bowker, 1996; Weitzman et al., 1972). These studies have generally pointed to evidence of sexism, that is, the denigration of females realised in tandem with the exaltation of males (Ivy & Backlund, 1994: 72)

The discursive construction of teachers and implications for continuing professional development

The Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025 is a document that spells out a plan of action for revamping the Malaysian education system. Therefore, it is no surprise that references are made to teachers and their role in ensuring the successful execution of the action plan. Although the blueprint does not set out a course of action for teachers of individual subjects, specific reference is made to English language teachers and this is ideologically significant. In order to understand this significance and how the blueprint positions Malaysian English language teachers, the document needs to be located within the wider discourse community, vis-à-vis through an intertextual reading. In this paper, we first examine the discursive construction of English language teachers in the blueprint as well as media texts to illustrate how these texts have collectively constructed the identity of Malaysian English language teachers. Next, we argue that this discursive construction of Malaysian English language teachers has had consequences for the way continuing professional development programmes have been organised for them in the first of three waves of the Malaysian Education Blueprint action plan from 2013 to 2015. The findings reveal that continuing professional development programmes during this period have focused predominantly on the training of the discursively constructed inept Malaysian English language teacher to ensure they possess the desired proficiency and are able to make changes to existing classroom practices that are aligned with the government agenda

Double-phase transition and giant positive magnetoresistance in the quasi-skutterudite Gd3_3Ir4_4Sn13_{13}

The magnetic, thermodynamic and electrical/thermal transport properties of the caged-structure quasi-skutterudite Gd$_3$Ir$_4$Sn$_{13}$ are re-investigated. The magnetization $M(T)$, specific heat $C_p(T)$ and the resistivity $\rho(T)$ reveal a double-phase transition -- at $T_{N1}\sim$ 10~K and at $T_{N2}\sim$ 8.8~K -- which was not observed in the previous report on this compound. The antiferromagnetic transition is also visible in the thermal transport data, thereby suggesting a close connection between the electronic and lattice degrees of freedom in this Sn-based quasi-skutterudite. The temperature dependence of $\rho(T)$ is analyzed in terms of a power-law for resistivity pertinent to Fermi liquid picture. Giant, positive magnetoresistance (MR) $\approx$ 80$\%$ is observed in Gd$_3$Ir$_4$Sn$_{13}$ at 2~K with the application of 9~T. The giant MR and the double magnetic transition can be attributed to the quasi-cages and layered antiferromagnetic structure of Gd$_3$Ir$_4$Sn$_{13}$ vulnerable to structural distortions and/or dipolar or spin-reorientation effects. The giant value of MR observed in this class of 3:4:13 type alloys, especially in a Gd-compound, is the highlight of this work.Comment: 20 pages single column, 7 figures, 1 table; Accepted to J. Appl. Phys., 201