Musica Transalpina, 1588, and its relation to Italian and English secular vocal music of the sixteenth century.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Linguistic liminality in the early years of school : urban South African children ‘betwixt and between’ languages of learning

This article is about an investigation into the English spoken language competence of 144 first graders in two urban (‘township’) schools in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. The study was conducted from an anthropological and a cognitive developmental perspective. In one school isiZulu and Sesotho are used mainly as medium of instruction, while in the other school the language of teaching and learning is English. The inquiry is part of longitudinal panel research in which children’s overall development and school progress over four years is documented by way of growth modelling. This initial assessment of the children’s basic interpersonal communication skills in English found, not unexpectedly, that the children in the first mentioned school know English mostly to the extent of the naming of objects, while the children in the other school are able to use morpho-syntactically more complex language. These findings may shed some light on the phenomenon of school culture liminality in its interplay with linguistic liminality, considering that children’s basic English may scaffold their academic English

How school history textbooks position a textual community through the topic of racism

This article views chapters from history textbooks as a glimpse into a particular zeitgeist of the current South African educational milieu. The central question is how these sampled books position a textual community as mediated by the topic of race theories impacting the twentieth century in various regions. To contextualise the topic, we provide a brief overview of similar studies and present some voices in current debates about the meaning and relevance of conceptions of race and racism. We then analyse data, providing examples and illustrations. The five major emerging themes from the discourse analysis of the texts are that authors 1) write from a single perspective showing intolerance of ambiguity; 2) have an a-historical or anti-historical position towards text; 3) write from a reductionist position; 4) mimic critical thinking; and 5) position themselves as scaffolds that create opportunities for inquiry. These findings are discussed in some detail. We conclude that the books are predominantly positioned to advance citizenship education in a specific mould and that they tend to repeat the letter of the "curriculum law" of democratising and of healing the divisions of the past, but in the process defeat the spirit of such healing. We end by considering some implications for textbook writing

'Re-zoning' proximal development in a parallel e-learning course

The action inquiry reported in this article focused on the way in which students engaged in, and what their views were on, a course that included two concurrent modes of delivery - a face-to-face version and its exact twin in online format, the former being complemented by the latter. This twinning course was introduced to expand learning opportunities in what we perceived to have become a compressed face-to-face curriculum with less scheduled teaching time than previously. Additionally, we wanted to engage students by exposing them to a constructivist educational landscape in the twin courses by challenging them to construct a multi-media metaphor as main learning artefact, integrating their ways of learning in this artefact. We believed that the two courses would reinforce each other in an educational symbiosis, and that the online version would compensate for less face-to-face learning and teaching time, due to logistical changes at the institution. In the first set of findings, in a research project that will continue for three years, the researchers found that it was initially very disturbing for the students to work in parallel mode within the same curriculum, but that they gradually became au fait with the processes and that the majority saw it as an opportunity to become more proficient learners. There were, however, a substantial number of students for whom the disturbance of their cognitive comfort zone of mostly reproductive 'learning' was an extremely negative experience. They appeared to be trapped in their educational comfort zones and had narrowed their zones of proximal development, probably because of fixed patterns of educational behaviour, which could include an epistemology that was not receptive to self-directed learning. (South African Journal of Education: 2002 22(4): 297-304

Marshall University Music Department Presents a MUsic Alive Faculty & Guest Artist Collaboration Series: Supreme Duo , Elizabeth Reed Smith, violin, Henning Vauth, piano

https://mds.marshall.edu/music_perf/1682/thumbnail.jp

Marshall University Music Department Presents a MUsic Alive Faculty & Guest Artist Collaboration Series, A Tour Around the World: HAMBURG, Elizabeth Reed Smith, violin, Stephen Lawson, horn, Henning Vauth, piano

https://mds.marshall.edu/music_perf/1384/thumbnail.jp

Marshall University Music Department Presents A Tour Around the World: HAMBURG, Elizabeth Reed Smith, violin, Stephen Lawson, horn, Henning Vauth, piano

https://mds.marshall.edu/music_perf/1385/thumbnail.jp

Transforming challenging schools through the leadership of superheads

The ascent of ‘school-improvement’ discourses in recent educational development initiatives has often centred on the installations of senior teachers from other schools into those that are seen as ‘failing’. Specifically, the notion of ‘superhead’ has been introduced in recent years as a strategy for improving ‘failing’ schools, where such individuals are given a brief of ‘raising standards’. Education' texts have abundant literature on alternative conceptions of leadership and on the role of leadership in effecting change. Little exists, however, on the impact of external leaders or ‘superheads’ transforming schools in challenging circumstances. Less still has been written on how individuals assume such roles and how they understand the process of transformation. This study takes an insider-outsider perspective on the practical challenge entailed in transforming school performance. From working as a teacher and consultant in two of the three inner city case study schools in Northern England, I draw upon data generated by using a mixed methods approach across these schools, all emerging from challenging circumstances. I examine how leadership impacts upon middle leaders and pupils through the narratives of mainstream ideology. The voices of the adults and children in these data serve as a reminder of the human impact resulting from external and internal interventions in schools. Social theory is mobilised in support of this task by drawing upon the writings of Foucault to problematise taken-for-granted practices in education. Foucault’s tools provide a mechanism for inspecting the narrative, through which I align history, power and discipline to education. Thus, I argue that a ‘superhead’ being transported in to transform a school is too simplistic a notion and one that undermines the complexities visible within these data gathered in this study

Editorial: The ‘words’ of Volume 8

No abstract availabl

Development of an instrument to assess early number concept development in four South African languages

A recently published interview-based test, known by its partly German acronym, MARKO-D SA, is introduced in this article by way of a narrative of its development through various cycles of research. The 48-item test, in 4 South African languages, captures number concept development of children in the 6 to 8-year age group. The authors present their argument for the South African versioning and translation of the test for this country, where there is a dearth of suitable assessment instruments for gauging young children’s mathematical concept development. We also present the findings of the research that was conducted to standardise and norm the local version of the test, along with our reasoning about the theoretical strength of the conceptual model that undergirds the test