Group items tagged

"In this paper, the authors examine some of the implications of born-digital research environments by discussing the emergence of data mining and the analysis of social media platforms. With the rise of individual online activity in chat rooms, social networking sites and micro-blogging services, new repositories for social science research have become available in large quantities. Given the changes of scale that accompany such research, both in terms of data mining and the communication of results, the authors term this type of research 'massified research'. This article argues that while the private and commercial processing of these new massive data sets is far from unproblematic, the use by academic practitioners poses particular challenges with respect to established ethical protocols. These involve reconfigurations of the external relations between researchers and participants, as well as the internal relations that compose the identities of the participant, the researcher and that of the data. Consequently, massified research and its outputs operate in a grey area of undefined conduct with respect to these concerns. The authors work through the specific case study of using Twitter's public Application Programming Interface for research and visualization. To conclude, this article proposes some potential best practices to extend current procedures and guidelines for such massified research. Most importantly, the authors develop these under the banner of 'agile ethics'. The authors conclude by making the counterintuitive suggestion that researchers make themselves as vulnerable to potential data mining as the subjects who comprise their data sets: a parity of practice."

"Research capacity building has become a prominent theme in higher education institutions in China and across the world. However, Chinese Teaching English as a Foreign Language academics' research output has been quite limited. In order to build their research capacity, it is necessary to understand their perceptions about research. This case study presents the perceptions about research of six Chinese Teaching English as a Foreign Language academics in a context of growing institutional demands for research. One-on-one interviews of 35-60 minutes' duration were conducted with these academics from an institution in north China. Thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews indicated that the Chinese Teaching English as a Foreign Language academics held positive perceptions about the teaching-research nexus. However, the value of research to them seemed to be limited to teaching and career advancement. They also expressed varied concerns about the institutional research requirements. The findings suggested several implications for the institution's administrators to further enhance academics' research capacity building."

Critical multiculturalism and social justice have emerged in educational contexts as primarily pedagogical concerns, confined to the processes of teaching and learning. This article raises the question about the application of these principles to the research process. Through a critical self-reflection on researcher roles and practices, this article highlights four emergent characteristics of the multicultural/social justice researcher: the commitment to a common good; the re-definition of the researcher-researched relationship; the interrogation of the traditional roles, norms and power dynamics of academic research and researchers; and the merging of the tripartite distinctions of teaching, research and service in the role of the professor. These serve as a starting point for dialogue on the re-conceptualization of the role of the multicultural/social justice researcher.

"Indigenous scholars have debated the impact that researchers and the act of researching have on Native and Indigenous people and communities. Although literature on this subject has grown, little has been written explicitly laying out the doing of research with these communities. The authors seek to articulate their doing by drawing upon the essential research principles and standards set by scholars. The authors seek to examine their work as education researchers in three different international contexts-Kenya, Cambodia, and "Indian country" in the United States-highlighting research practice shaped by context, relationship, and discourse emergent in their investigations of schooling, language revitalization, and scientific knowledge access. The authors reflect, analyze, and summarize their actions of decolonizing research that were present or particularly challenging cross-culturally, in each context. Examples of common action in the projects include relinquishing control, reenvisioning knowledge, cultivating relationships, and purposeful representation of communities. Finally, the authors connect their actions to the principles and standards set by scholars and discuss lessons learned."

This article discusses the origins of video-based approaches to social research and their continuation up to the present moment. It begins by considering early studies employing silent cinema film and audio recording, followed by the unification of audio and visual recording in sound cinema film. Special emphasis is placed on the perspectives and methods initiated by the 'Natural History of an Interview' research group; the first systematic study of verbal and nonverbal behavior together, as these occur in immediate social interaction in face-to-face encounters. The discussion then continues autobiographically as I recount my own early research experience of the development of video-based research approaches. This is followed by an overview of current work to show the wide range of contemporary research that uses video. The article concludes with a few speculations concerning likely futures for video-based approaches in social research.

This paper will focus on an applied research initiative1 we are currently engaged in, which brings together academics (both from conventional institutions - the university, the research centers and undergraduate colleges - and from 'new and innovative institutional structures') with policy-makers and grant-making organizations. The initiative has to do with the entire field of higher education (India having one of the biggest higher education systems in the world), but interestingly it was incubated by the Center for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS). The painstaking process of the gestation of collaborative interdisciplinary themes/fields of research/teaching and the labor of negotiation with policy-makers and grantees in the field of higher education by a Cultural Studies centre is thus the focus of this paper. Called the Higher Education Cell, an important aspect of the initiative's genealogy is that it is based on (a) a critique of the existing disciplines and an attention to the birthing of 'new thematic/field specifics' as also (b) a critique of the research undertaken in mainstream institutions and an attention to new research methodologies. The Higher Education Cell is at present focusing on four major functions through which it plans to engage with the higher education sector. These functions are (i) Incubation of Research Initiatives, (ii) Institutional Collaborations, (iii) Documentation and Archiving, and (iv) Grant Development.

"This paper explores the methodological basis for empirically researching moments of major policy change. Its genesis is in the methodological challenges presented by the initial stages of an ongoing research project examining the current attempts to establish the first nation-wide Australian curriculum. We draw on Dorothy Smith's development of institutional ethnography and Bourdieuian field analysis to outline a methodological framework for research that has at its centre a concern to understand the social and institutional processes that enable, support and discursively prepare for significant educational reform. Working with and between these two eminent contributions to sociological enquiry, our paper explores the ways in which research can trace educational governance through the production, reproduction and subsequent enactment of generations of policy texts even before they are officially released for use in schools. In particular, we suggest that examination of the day-to-day processes involved in policy production shows how policy texts are progressively invested with institutional meanings and come to instantiate and govern institutional relations. The methodology we are developing foregrounds the creation and dissemination of discourses that support specific orientations to educational practice and governance, as well as the institutional practices that embed the logics of the field."

With the increasing use of video recording in social research methodological questions about multimodal transcription are more timely than ever before. How do researchers transcribe gesture, for instance, or gaze, and how can they show to readers of their transcripts how such modes operate in social interaction alongside speech? Should researchers bother transcribing these modes of communication at all? How do they define a 'good' transcript? In this paper we begin to develop a social semiotic framework to account for transcripts as artefacts, treating them as empirical material through which transcription as a social, meaning making practice can be reconstructed. We look at some multimodal transcripts produced in conversation analysis, discourse analysis, social semiotics and micro-ethnography, drawing attention to the meaning-making principles applied by the transcribers. We argue that there are significant representational differences between multimodal transcripts, reflecting differences in the professional practices and the rhetorical and analytical purposes of their makers.

Although very little research has been done on cooperative learning (CL) in New Zealand, international research is positive about the educational benefits of working in culturally diverse groups. This paper presents the findings of a research project exam

This paper meshes Carr's research on media literacy with Porfilio's research on computer literacy, with both of these areas being focused on the central notion of social justice within a multicultural society. Both researchers teach pre-service teachers,

This paper explores student experiences of learning to think critically. Twenty-six zoology undergraduates took part in the study for three years of their degree at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Vygotsky's developmental model of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) provided a framework as we examined how critical thinking was developed. There was very little evidence of critical thinking at first year as students experienced a high-level of material scaffold in the form of course documents, textbooks, problem solving-exercises and discussions that were primarily aimed at the acquisition of factual knowledge. In large classes students were anonymous to lecturers and they relied on each other for support. In years 2 and 3, learning to do research became the main scaffold for critical thinking and students gradually changed their views about the nature of knowledge. Verbal scaffolding and conversation with lecturers and peers allowed students to extend their ZPD for critical thinking. They began to accept responsibility for their own and their peers' learning as they practiced being a zoology researcher. These findings are discussed in relation to two approaches to scaffolding in the ZPD and it is suggested that research should be an integral part of the first year if critical thinking remains a key aim for higher education.

"This study draws on the application of sociocultural theory to second-language learning and teaching to examine the impact of a design-based research approach on teacher development and literacy instruction to English-language learners (ELLs). Design-based research methodology was employed to derive theoretical suppositions relating to the process of learning as well as the means by which this process is supported. Our research questions were: (a) How will this professional development model result in shifts in teacher thinking about language and literacy learning for ELLs; (b) what innovations in teachers' repertoires of practice will be developed; and (c) in what ways will these shifts in teachers' thinking and innovations in their repertoire of practice bring about new forms of language and literacy learning? Our findings point to the need to place development in the forefront of teacher professional development models. Also foregrounded is the importance of promoting teachers' critical reflection on classroom practices and of creating hypotheses for pedagogical change vis-à-vis new understanding about students' linguistic, cognitive and academic needs."

"Research has demonstrated that second language immersion is an effective means of facilitating primary school students' second language acquisition without undermining their competence in their first language. Despite the rapid growth of Chinese-English bilingual programmes in China, limited empirical research has been conducted thus far by which to evaluate the programme effectiveness in relation to students' academic achievement, their cognitive development and the teaching and learning processes with regard to teacher education. This article presents evidence from several related empirical studies recently conducted in three schools affiliated with the China-Canada-United States English Immersion (CCUEI) project. These studies focus on three broad categories of findings: first, on student academic achievement represented by English (L2), Chinese (L1) and mathematics (both literacy and numeracy); second, on cognitive predictors of English reading and listening achievement of these immersion students; and third, on immersion teachers who teach within the context of Chinese-English bilingual education. These combined results present a complex developmental picture of students' academic achievement and cognitive development; and an insight into the teachers who teach within the context of an aggressive fast growth of Chinese-English bilingual programmes in China."

"Researchers from a range of disciplines have been theorising and empirically examining intercultural competence and intercultural education for decades. This review article synthesises the research literature about these concepts around three questions: What is intercultural competence? How can it be developed? And how can it be measured? Our aim is to provide an overview of current theories and empirical findings, as well as to show gaps in the literature."

"Research exploring the means by which new media technologies can shape development within marginalized communities worldwide has began to move away from discussion limited to technical and infrastructural, to consider the interactions, beliefs, and values of local communities. Yet most projects continue to focus on enabling communities to access external information, rather than on the possibility of using media to catalyze community reflection and thereby developmental activity from within. This article shows how this promise can be actualized by providing an overview of an experimental project that made available a set of video cameras to a carefully selected group of community members in a ritualized, largely nonliterate village in Andhra Pradesh, India. It concludes that policymakers, researchers, and practitioners would benefit from considering the possibilities that reflective media hold to generate collective action and consensus building, and that these possibilities can synergize with the need to develop scalable projects."

"Comparative research in multilingual urban primary schools indicates that the pedagogical and political goals of schooling may operate at cross-purposes. Classroom observations and teacher interview-discussions were conducted in classes for immigrant children in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where the language of instruction is French, and in classes in Pretoria, Gauteng Province, South Africa, where children from many different language backgrounds are taught in English. Two main themes emerged: (1) pedagogically, effective teacher-learner communication can break down when teachers are unaware of the roles that language and culture play in second language classrooms; (2) politically, efforts to assimilate learners into new socio-cultural/political contexts sometimes take precedence over sound pedagogical practice, such as drawing on the linguistic and cultural repertoire that learners bring to the classroom. This ongoing qualitative research underlines the importance of preparing pre-service and in-service teachers for the linguistic and cultural diversity they are bound to encounter in their classrooms, and of deepening their understanding of the influence of such diversity on the teaching-learning process."

"This paper examines the ways in which world Englishes studies are developing into a distinct academic discipline, and discusses the consequences of this regimentation of knowledge for teaching and research. By first outlining the various ways in which bodies of knowledge are organized into discrete disciplines, and then surveying the history and current status of world Englishes studies according to these classificatory processes, the paper presents a metadisciplinary inquiry into prevailing approaches to the study of English in the world today. It is hoped that reflexive investigation of this type can contribute to research and education in this area by making explicit the organizational framework - in terms both of the politics and epistemology - which structures present-day investigations into the worldwide use of the English language."

The purpose of this article is to examine the authors' experiences while trying to enter and engage local communities in bottom-up literacies through participatory action research (PAR) toward the community's own collective self-development. In trying to enter five different communities, I have found several challenges and roadblocks such as mistrust of 'university people': legacy of the conventional outside-in and top-down research procedures for working in communities; power struggles with community 'gatekeepers', including 'building keepers'; and bureaucratized project-driven community work. I consider that under the current neoliberal educational policies that are plaguing the world, for example, No Child Left Behind in the USA, self-development projects promoted through PAR can be viable ways to defy these policies and their fatalist thinking. School children's parents and their communities are nowadays in a better position than teachers to fight for reclaiming local control of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

This paper aims to consider the recent interest in a type of qualitative research known as narrative research, discussing the relationship between narrative and identity formation and/or understanding. The main objective is to try to establish a link betw

When used with caution and humility, the cipher, a metaphor central to hip-hop worlds, captures the power of human relationality and the arts in collaborative qualitative research about and for social justice at the beginning of the 21st century. In this