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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.

Implicit and Explicit Knowledge in Second Language Learning, Testing, and Teaching is a book with ambition. The authors aim to provide researchers in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) with information on explicit knowledge (EK) and implicit knowledge (IK) of second language morphosyntax in terms of their definitions, their measurement, their utility to second language learning, and the effects that different instructional approaches may have on the creation of these two types of knowledge. The book is divided into five parts based on these aims. Part One, 'Introduction,' provides an overview of definitions and issues concerning EK and IK in cognitive psychology, educational psychology, and SLA. EK and IK are defined in terms of largely competing characteristics. For instance, EK is declarative while IK is procedural.

"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."

Social movements operate in 'an environment for politics that is increasingly information-rich and communication-intensive' (Bimber 2001, p. 53). There is an established literature on new ICTs and social movements, but little of it considers mobilization in the global South. This paper presents a case study on the use of ICTs by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a South African social movement campaigning for the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS. McAdam et al.'s comparative framework of three theoretical perspectives on mobilization (McAdam et al. 1996) - mobilising structures, opportunity structures and framing processes - is used to link the analysis into the social movement literature. The findings show extensive use of email, mailing lists and the Internet in TAC activities despite low levels of access among the movement's largely poor activist base. ICTs are used to help the movement engage with elites, professional groups and media, as well as in the development of local and international movement networks. There is also widespread informal use of mobile phones, which a local NGO is working with the TAC to extend. Mobiles are seen as a way to reach the previously disconnected majority, strengthening their involvement in existing processes as well as extending the movement's reach beyond its current branch-based structure.

This paper focuses on an issue attracting increasing attention: the possible disadvantage inflicted on non-Anglophone academics by the dominance of English in scientific publication and academic exchange. We critically review the evidence for linguistic disadvantage, noting some of its limitations, and critique the native/non-native distinction as a coarse and somewhat unsatisfactory criterion for distinguishing between the advantaged and disadvantaged. In the second part of the paper we report on an empirical survey of the attitudes of Spanish academics at the University of Zaragoza to the possible disadvantage they may experience in publishing in English, and we investigate determinants of these attitudes. Though the survey shows, as expected, that a majority do feel disadvantaged in academic publication relative to Anglophone scholars, it also indicates, we argue, that attitudes are more complex and multidimensional than the literature sometimes suggests. Self-reported language proficiency emerges as a significant determinant of attitudes. The final part of the paper discusses a number of proposed language planning interventions designed to redress linguistic disadvantage. We argue that some of the more radical of these are flawed or unfeasible and suggest that more modest measures have a greater likelihood of ameliorating the situation.

"In assessing the various forms of welfare capitalism, normative political philosophy typically draws on two major philosophical traditions - republicanism and liberalism, invoking either equality and the public good or, alternatively, individual autonomy as normative criteria for evaluation. Drawing, instead, on Critical Theory as a tradition of social philosophy, I advance a proposal for assessment of the types of welfare capitalism conducted as 'immanent critique' of the key structural dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Normative criteria thus emerge within a diachronic dimension of social transformation, which in turn grounds the comparison among synchronic types of capitalism. This ultimately enables a research agenda for the operationalisation of a normative analysis of capitalism within which social justice is gauged by the degree of voluntary employment flexibility - a key factor in the distribution of life-chances in the early twenty-first century."

In Brazil - and more largely in Latin America - the fight of the indigenous movements for the demarcation of their territory and the installation of an intercultural school education contributed to the constitutional changes of the years 1980-1990 which led these States to regard themselves from then on as pluricultural and multiethnic nations and to recognize collective rights specific to native people and tribes living on their territory. The author analyzes the advent and the development of this intercultural bilingual education in two border regions of the State of Amazonas (Alto Solimes and Alto Rio Negro) near the populations Ticuna, Baniwa and Tukano during the years 1990 and 2000. He shows in particular how the indigenous school, an assimilationist instrument for the Occidental and Christian culture until the 1980s, has been transformed by supporting the reappropriation of the traditional knowledge; meanwhile this school has opened itself to 'Western' knowledge in order to make it possible for the younger generation to acquire the ability to go towards evolution.

"Based on almost 50 years of combined experience as prison activists and prison teachers, the authors offer three case studies of prison activism and pedagogy in action. The first case study, by Hartnett, details the "artistry of agency" as enacted in poetry workshops in prison and in public poetry events, thus illustrating artistic communication. The second, by Wood, examines how friendship becomes political in the epistolary communication between free and imprisoned correspondents, thus addressing interpersonal communication. The third, by McCann, addresses web-based communication as a tool for advocacy for condemned prisoner/activists on Texas's death row, and hence political communication. Taken as a whole, the three case studies celebrate different communication strategies as avenues of enlightenment and empowerment while offering powerful arguments for abolishing the prison-industrial complex."

This article argues for a more systematic and integrated approach to the cultural dimension within English language education in a globalized world, with the concept of culture taking on an affectively related and process-oriented meaning. To this end, it suggests an approach for the development of the ability to decenter from cultural norms and behavior that previously have been taken for granted, within a social constructivist framework of learning. The study from which the article is drawn was conducted through action research in an EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom during the three final years of basic education within the Swedish-medium educational system in Finland.

"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."

"This article attempts an initial exploration of the ramifications of geopolitical partition for identity in the context of children and their education. While not an exhaustive definition, partitions may be observed to follow armed conflict between human collectivities (nation-states, putative nations, ethnic groups, etc.) and are the outcome of treaties, armistices and unilateral action. Furthermore, a comparative and historical overview suggests that such macro-political action has clear micro-sociological impact, not least upon children and their families. While there may be some overlap with the creation of refugees this is by no means an automatic outcome of partition. On the other hand, an 'imagined community' with refugee status may be a consequence of conflict, the drafting of new geopolitical boundaries together with voluntary or forced migration. Here, in the context of children's education, questions are posed regarding the disintegration of collective identity, the construction of otherness and the formation of new identities as manifested, inter alia, in the dynamics of nationality, language and religion. Inevitably, while the consequences of partitions set challenges for the possibility for intercultural dialogue they may also establish the possibility of new opportunities for the development of more inclusive identities."

The prospect for the MDGs cannot be reduced to the sum of the eight goals, divorced from international dynamics, the hard interests of states and the global dynamics that impact on both, or from the complexities and intractability of widespread poverty and its consequences. The legacies and controversies of previous international development initiatives also beset perceptions of, and support for, the MDGs. However, the wholly inclusive nature of the goals give them a unique normative standing and momentum; and the quantitative measures of progress ensure that there is more to the goals than lofty ideals. In addition, the thematic linkages between each of the goals is mutually reinforcing. While not discounting either structural difficulties or the lack of adequate progress in some specifics, it is important not to overlook the political consensus, abundant goodwill and normative momentum that have already been generated in the ten years to date. The answer to the question, 'How promising is the promise of the MDGs?' has not yet been answered definitively: there remains good reason for cautious optimism for progress up to 2015-and through revitalized commitment and persistent engagement, well beyond that date.

The connections between the concepts of emergence and narrative are manifold, complex and significantly non-obvious, but in one context at least they come together explicitly: the term "emergent narrative" has an established currency in computer game studies as a potential (and desirable) effect of interactive media. Indeed for many it is the holy grail of contemporary computer game design, offering as it does the prospect of reconciliation between the conflicting values of narrative satisfaction and player autonomy. In the academic context of digital media studies, this same promise of synthesis has put emergent narrative in the front line of a long-running debate between ludologists and narratologists about the relative importance of game and narrative paradigms. My argument here suggests that emergent narrative is not the unifying concept it appears to be for computer game studies, though it does have interesting possibilities in that field; more fundamentally, though, I want to argue that this seemingly very specific concept helps to clarify the incommensurability of emergence and narrative and has implications for our larger understanding of the process of narrative sense making. The discussion begins with an introduction to emergence and some indication of its problematic relation to narrative. I then turn to emergent narrative itself, outlining the history of the concept and some difficulties of definition. I argue that these difficulties arise from confusions about the nature of simulation, and I make a case for understanding narrative and simulation as distinct and, in certain respects, antithetical modes of representation.

This reflection, using auto-ethnography as method, explores the value of attunement to feedback in the teaching of a professional postgraduate course for allied mental health professionals. This is, therefore, a story of two halves: a narrative of my learning based on my reflections of my own teaching, and a story of how I have integrated feedback from students and their clinical supervisors to refine my teaching and course development in the programme. The resulting model of teaching and learning I have developed involves a process of 'creative attunement'. 'Attunement' is a psychodynamic concept involving 'contact' or a quality of relationship based on availability, presence, empathy, respect and selective disclosure. The learning activities of the programme aim to develop an awareness of the students' own 'craft knowledge' as graduate social workers and occupational therapists during their intern year in the health services. Through a process of growing the students' awareness of self in the clinician's role by attuning to students' feedback, learning from undergraduate education becomes more available to be applied in a new field of practice. Designing learning activities that incorporate stories of practice and align with clinical supervisors and service user narratives provides access to a variety of learning experiences. I explore the implications for developing critical-reflective practice within a 'community of learners' model.

This article introduces a forum of response articles to the edited volume Masculinities in Text and Teaching. The forum features two scholars of English in a transatlantic conversation and then a response by the editor of the volume. The forum develops, from the edited collection, the theme of pedagogical uncertainty in studies of masculinity and the ways those conversations can be used to help students develop their own humanistic ethics in the classroom. Employing two styles of doing work on teaching from the perspective of textual scholars, the author of one article reads her own experience and classroom moments to build an argument about the high stakes of doing work around gender for students and the profession. The other author reads from both classroom experience and from a text she teaches to open up new pedagogical possibilities. These techniques are echoed in the collected volume. A key argument throughout is that classroom struggles around texts and identities - which often provoke feelings of vulnerability and uncertainty for both teachers and students - can be deployed in conversations that enable students to learn about both the humanities subject and themselves.

The federal government's pledge for increased access to computers for students has been held up as "groundbreaking reform" as "digital schools" become a reality for more students. However, access to technology remains uneven across schools, student compe

"This article aims to report a single case study of how an Islamic boarding school (pesantren) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, prepared students for a multicultural Indonesia. Despite negative portrayal by the Western media about increasing Islamic radicalism in some pesantren, many pesantren are in fact transforming into modern Islamic institutions, incorporating the teaching of democratic values and practices, endorsing civil society and community development, and inculcating cultural/religious diversity and tolerance in students. Using schoolyard and classroom ethnographies, along with in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (FGD) with teachers and students, the study found that classroom and non-classroom practices of the pesantren promote the development of multicultural education. Several subjects within both curriculum developed by the government and curriculum developed by pesantrens discuss a considerable number of issues that relate to cultural and religious diversity, tolerance, citizenship and democracy. The non-classroom practices of pesantren offer invaluable and intensive experiences for students to socialise with peers from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. However, challenges remain for the kyai (the pesantren's great leader) and other leaders, such as teachers' lack of competency, unclear multicultural objectives in both the pesantren's curricula and the pesantren's traditions, and unequal relations among students and among teachers. These challenges must be overcome to further develop education for cultural diversity."

"The questions that animate Sangeeta Ray's engaging new book on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak bear upon teaching and learning. The push and pull of being both student of Spivak's work and teacher of that work in the classroom and in the medium of the book are palpable from the first pages. We begin with a heading of "Partial Beginnings," and soon the "impossible" task of a book on Spivak is invoked (1). "[H]ow would I write her without diminishing her presence?" (1) asks Ray, facing, in fact, the double bind confronting every teacher: how to respond responsibly to the subject they have to teach. As Ray points out, Spivak calls attention to the play in Derrida's French between répondre à and répondre de that formalizes several options here. Thus, "give an answer to," "answering to," "being answerable for" (Spivak, "Responsibility," 61; Ray, 72).1 None is predictably the right thing. Caught in this double bind, the teacher is left without a reliable device with which to calculate what her answerability to the material to be taught should be. So we receive "a version of the many possible books that were discarded and rewritten" (Ray, 1). Maybe it all sounds a bit dramatic, but in fact it's an experience of everyday life: like everyone, the teacher must decide how to go on, but every "instant of decision is a madness . . . a decision of urgency and precipitation, acting in the night of nonknowledge and nonrule" (Derrida, "Force of Law," 255). In her continuously reflexive engagement with the texts of Spivak, Ray does not cease reminding her readers that the urgent, productively anxiety-inducing scene of pedagogy is acted out in those texts."

"Learning processes are closely connected to the contexts in which professional and day-to-day practices are conducted, and to the characteristics of those contexts. These processes develop through and between different systems of activities, established by actors operating on the basis of explicit and implicit rules in order to achieve certain goals. They do so through the use of artefacts and knowledge, within a system of labour sharing, role definition and specific power mechanisms. What happens when the rules of these systems, or the roles, artefacts or knowledge, change? What happens to learning processes if the contexts in which the practices are implemented happen to be online, for example in a blog or a virtual community of practice (VCoP) or on social networking platforms? When we speak of learning in Web 2.0 environments created ex novo within a project, we are speaking of a type of participation and precise presence that does not manifest itself through a nomadic, solitary journey around the web. It is, rather, considered as one of the ways of being, learning and working together within a given project. This is, therefore, a very powerful option: learning together online through the use of ICT and in a given space of time."

"This article focuses on the administration of disciplinary exclusion (expulsion) from school. It identifies a number of social boundaries between people that negatively affect students subject to permanent exclusion, to the extent that they can be seen as constituting incidents of institutional racism. For example, the high statistical currency of the English language and the lack of adequate translation facilities are shown to constitute social boundaries between people that undermine the participation of parents in school exclusion and inclusion processes. Age assessments for immigrant and refugee children are also seen to affect institutional responses to individual cases of permanent exclusion from school. Assumptions about what excluded students 'need' are found to sometimes be made on the basis of reductive skin‐colour labels, and a disconnect is discovered between the discourses that school and family are socially authorised to adopt in discussing students at risk of exclusion. It is recommended that institutional racism in schooling is acknowledged and acted upon by both policy makers and practitioners."