Painting a picture of possibility: the transmission of symbolic violence in an urban township school

The purpose of this study is to explore the narratives and non-verbal communication of students and teachers in one low socioeconomic status school, with particular reference to the messages that are conveyed about student performance and student aspirations, and student responses to these messages. The validity of these messages is evaluated in relation to the contexts, conditions and interactions within the school. To this end, the study employs conceptual resources drawn from Bourdieu and Lefebvre, especially Bourdieu’s notions of symbolic violence and misrecognition. Data is derived primarily from interviews with teachers and students and from observations within the school. The study finds that students are confronted with several messages of promise and threat at school which link ‘success’ and performance to individual effort and choices. However, such messages ignore the ways in which the contexts and conditions in which schooling takes place impact on student performance and constrain their future opportunities. Even students who have great ambitions, who adopt a positive mind-set and who work hard have to reckon with the realities and narrow possibilities that come from being in an under-resourced school in a poor community. The study suggests that managerialist and meritocratic explanations of student performance, that are currently dominant in South African policy discourse, present too narrow a view of the realities that produce underperformance and that such explanations imply that students and teachers are to blame for disadvantages that are produced by systemic inequalities

Polyphasic taxonomy of Aspergillus section Aspergillus (formerly Eurotium ), and its occurrence in indoor environments and food

Aspergillus section Aspergillus (formerly the genus Eurotium) includes xerophilic species with uniseriate conidiophores, globose to subglobose vesicles, green conidia and yellow, thin walled eurotium-like ascomata with hyaline, lenticular ascospores. In the present study, a polyphasic approach using morphological characters, extrolites, physiological characters and phylogeny was applied to investigate the taxonomy of this section. Over 500 strains from various culture collections and new isolates obtained from indoor environments and a wide range of substrates all over the world were identified using calmodulin gene sequencing. Of these, 163 isolates were subjected to molecular phylogenetic analyses using sequences of ITS rDNA, partial β-tubulin (BenA), calmodulin (CaM) and RNA polymerase II second largest subunit (RPB2) genes. Colony characteristics were documented on eight cultivation media, growth parameters at three incubation temperatures were recorded and micromorphology was examined using light microscopy as well as scanning electron microscopy to illustrate and characterise each species. Many specific extrolites were extracted and identified from cultures, including echinulins, epiheveadrides, auroglaucins and anthraquinone bisanthrons, and to be consistent in strains of nearly all species. Other extrolites are species-specific, and thus valuable for identification. Several extrolites show antioxidant effects, which may be nutritionally beneficial in food and beverages. Important mycotoxins in the strict sense, such as sterigmatocystin, aflatoxins, ochratoxins, citrinin were not detected despite previous reports on their production in this section. Adopting a polyphasic approach, 31 species are recognised, including nine new species. ITS is highly conserved in this section and does not distinguish species. All species can be differentiated using CaM or RPB2 sequences. For BenA, Aspergillus brunneus and A. niveoglaucus share identical sequences. Ascospores and conidia morphologyw, growth rates at different temperatures are most useful characters for phenotypic species identification