Critical text analysis : linking language and cultural studies

Many UK universities offer degree programmes in English Language specifically for non-native speakers of English. Such programmes typically include not only language development but also development in various areas of content knowledge. A challenge that arises is to design courses in different areas that mutually support each other, thus providing students with a coherent degree programme. In this article, I will discuss a Bachelor of Arts programme involving Cultural Studies and Translation, as well as English Language and Linguistics. I will offer a rationale for a course in critical text analysis, which is offered in the final year of the programme. It is intended to promote language development and cultural awareness as well as skills of linguistic analysis and critical thinking

Presenting a united front : assessed reflective writing on group experience

Assessed reflective writing is increasingly common in UK higher education. Students writing in this mode are typically required to narrate their experiences, evaluate their performance, investigate associated emotions, and comment on what has been learned. In this paper I focus on assessed reflective writing by students on an MA TESOL course who are required to write individual reflections on a process of working in a group to produce teaching materials. This task places particular demands on the writer. Like other students writing reflectively, they need to manage complex self presentation: to appear honest about relative successes and failures, to show evidence of appropriate reflection, and to indicate desirable learning. Because they are reflecting on a group experience, they also need to differentiate themselves from their work group in their account, and to reflect critically on others as well as on themselves. My focus in this paper is on the ways they manage these additional demands. I first examine the relative frequency with which writers refer to themselves and their work group, and then examine the content of self-referential and group-referential statements. Finally, I examine semantic patterns in the data and draw conclusions regarding possible reasons behind student writers’ choices about how to represent themselves and others

Making Ends Meet: How Should We Spread Prosperity and Improve Opportunity

For many Americans, the recovery from the 2007 recession, a recovery that officially began in 2009, feels very remote, or nonexistent. Even as the stock market surges and millions of jobs have been created, they see a very different picture. Many Americans still believe in the basic notion that anyone who works hard should be able to support a family and get ahead. What can we do to make that happen?This issue guide presents three options for deliberation:Create New OpportunitiesWe should make it easier for people to start new enterprises that will improve their circumstances. Whether it's starting a house painting business on the side or opening a restaurant, when individuals start new firms, it helps spur economic growth. More skilled tradespeople are needed, for example, as construction bounces back. Half of all private-sector jobs in the US are at small businesses, and in recent years small businesses have supplied two-thirds of all new jobs.Strengthen the Safety NetWe should secure and expand safeguards so that changes in the economy don't push people into poverty or leave families with children homeless or hungry. In the last decade, millions of people found themselves unemployed or underemployed with few or no benefits, sometimes indefinitely. Fewer people work with one company for decades, employee benefits have shrunk, technology and globalization have eliminated jobs, and more people are employed in freelance work. We need to make sure people will not face catastrophic losses as they adapt to these changes. To do this, we should strengthen the unemployment insurance program, protect workers' retirement, and make benefits more portable.Reduce InequalityWe should shrink the income gap. Today, the richest 10 percent of the country's population earn more than half of its total income. It is not right that CEOs make hundreds of times more than their employees, even as their companies cut workers' hours to avoid paying overtime and offering benefits. Some inequality helps drive people to succeed and become wealthier, but if people can't move into or stay in the middle class, or if the wealthy manipulate the system to their benefit, then we all lose. To reduce the large gaps between the very rich and the rest of society, schools should be funded more equally, we should do more to control college costs, and people who don't go to college should be able to get decent-paying jobs that allow them to stay in the middle class

Epistemological and interpersonal stance in a data description task : findings from a discipline-specific learner corpus

This article examines the stance options used by writers responding to a data description task in the discipline of Statistics. Based on a small learner corpus, it uses inductive qualitative content analysis to explore both the content propositions that students included in their writing, and the ways in which they expressed evaluative stance vis-à-vis such propositions. In the light of an interview with a specialist informant, the article discusses the appropriacy of the content choices and stance options taken by students. It then discusses the potential exploitation of the learner corpus for pedagogic purposes

A New Class of Retrocausal Models

Globally-constrained classical fields provide a unexplored framework for modeling quantum phenomena, including apparent particle-like behavior. By allowing controllable constraints on unknown past fields, these models are retrocausal but not retro-signaling, respecting the conventional block universe viewpoint of classical spacetime. Several example models are developed that resolve the most essential problems with using classical electromagnetic fields to explain single-photon phenomena. These models share some similarities with Stochastic Electrodynamics, but without the infinite background energy problem, and with a clear path to explaining entanglement phenomena. Intriguingly, the average intermediate field intensities share a surprising connection with quantum "weak values", even in the single-photon limit. This new class of models is hoped to guide further research into spacetime-based accounts of weak values, entanglement, and other quantum phenomena.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Entrop

Music teacher practice and identity in professional development partnerships

Since 1995, the author has been the university music educator responsible to a professional development partnership. Over an 8-year span, she has collected narratives of experience from approximately 100 pre-service music teachers, following, to some extent, the research model of Connelly and Clandinin. In developing their notion of "personal practical knowledge," Connelly and Clandinin discovered that teaching practice questions and teacher identity questions were closely linked. They argue that identity is not a fixed entity, but is "storied." In this paper, the author re-presents the identity stories of pre-service music teachers as they were shaped by experience inside professional development partnerships. Her aim is to use the stories to illuminate and inform people's present understanding of the social construction of music teacher identity, and to suggest how music teacher identities may be shaped differently inside professional development partnerships than they are shaped in traditional music teacher preparation. Obviously, not all of the narratives she has collected can be re-presented here. Methodologically, she has selected stores that exemplify recurring phenomena, but she has refrained from forming composite characters, settings, or plot lines. In selecting and interpreting the stories, she has heeded Britzman's caution that the narrative of lived experience and the lived experience itself "can never be synonymous.

Ohio Sheep Production Testing Program

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Ohio Beef Cattle Production Testing Program

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