Developing Transnational Literacies

In the new European higher education space, Universities in Europe are exhorted to cultivate and develop multilingualism. The European Commission's 2004-2006 action plan for promoting language learning and diversity speaks of the need to build an environment which is favourable to languages. Yet reality indicates that it is English which reigns supreme and has become the main foreign language used as means of instruction at European universities. Internationalisation has played a key role in this process, becoming one of the main drivers of the linguistic hegemony exerted by English. In this paper we examine the opinions of teaching staff involved in English-medium instruction, from pedagogical ecology-of-language and personal viewpoints. Data were gathered using group discussion. The study was conducted at a multilingual Spanish university where majority (Spanish), minority (Basque) and foreign (English) languages coexist, resulting in some unavoidable linguistic strains. The implications for English-medium instruction are discussed at the end of this paper.

The use of English as an international language (EIL) and its implications for teaching have attracted much scholarly attention. However, much of the discussion has remained at an abstract level and not provided pedagogical ideas that are theoretically sound, informed by research, and at the same time specific enough to be useful in the classroom. This poses a great challenge for teachers: while they receive a strong message that their current practice may be inadequate in preparing learners for using English in international encounters, they are not presented with suggestions of where to start implementing changes. The goal of this paper is to build upon the existing literature on teaching English for international communication with greater emphasis on pedagogical decisions and practices in the classroom. Using the conceptualization of EIL as a function of English as an international common language rather than a linguistic variety used uniformly in all international contexts, we explore key questions in TEIL and suggest specific ways to introduce an EIL perspective to existing English language classrooms.

"This article analyses the discursive unities which make possible the current transformation of teacher training and our understanding of teaching as a profession, while focusing particularly on European educational policy and the situation in Slovakia. Using Foucault's archaeological method, we reconstruct the discursive link points between the circumscribed, and at first glance, different approaches to teacher training, where on the one hand, we have a humanistic and constructivist prism, and on the other, we find the pragmatic, economizing pressure of neoliberal educational policy. Discursive reconstruction, however, shows that these approaches are not contradictory, rather that a humanistic and constructivist discourse, by shaping a specific kind of subjectivity (the teachers), supports the neoliberal reform of teacher training and constitutes the reasoning upon which it is based. The analysis is conducted by drawing together various components: the logic of the higher education reforms, the changes to the epistemological basis of teacher training, the regulation of professional development through professional standards, the psychological content and general permeation of entrepreneurial culture into education right through to the performance culture of the 'portfolios', which are the typical attributes of neoliberal governmentality, and not only in teacher training."

Cloud computing has started to transform economic activities in the global South. Many businesses are taking advantage of the pay-as-you-go model of the technology, and its scalability and flexibility features, and government agencies in the South have been investing in cloud-related mega-projects. Cloud-based mobile applications are becoming increasingly popular and the pervasiveness of cellphones means that the cloud may transform the way these devices are used. However, findings and conclusions drawn from surveys, studies and experiences of companies on the potential and impact of cloud computing in the developing world are inconsistent. This article reviews cloud diffusion in developing economies and examines some firms in the cloud's supply side in these economies to present a framework for evaluating the attractiveness of this technology in the context of evolving needs, capabilities and competitive positions. It examines how various determinants related to the development and structure of related industries, externality mechanisms and institutional legitimacy affect cloud-related performances and impacts.

This paper examines the ways in which credentials from a range of education providers are used to (re)produce transnational financial elites in London's international financial district. Extant research has examined the long-standing relationship between educational background and entry into these financial labour markets. Far less attention has been paid to how the relationship between education and financial elites has changed more recently as financial labour markets have become increasingly transnational in nature and education and learning increasingly extend beyond higher education into the workplace. In response, this paper combines work on transnational elite labour markets with work from the sociology of education on the intersection between work and workplace education in order to understand the different strategies used by individuals (from both the UK and overseas) to acquire a range of credentials following their first degree in an effort to advance their careers within contemporary financial services labour markets.

Digital mediation is central to how children and youth grow up in the global North and in much of the global South today. In taking account of this situation, of late researchers have tended to draw on a sociology of the child in conjunction with an examination of how digitization is changing the experience of childhood itself. This article also begins by tracking key social, economic and cultural changes in young people's lives. We then link these changes to the immersive media life many children around the world are living today, and note the worries this raises among parents, educators and others. To conclude, we identify the paradox of participation that is shaping children's digital culture and forcing researchers and others to reconsider the relationships between consumerism and civic life.

It is estimated that approximately 3 million students are enrolled as international students, and it is possible to project that this number may reach more than 7 million by 2025. As global demand exceeds the supply, competition is building for the best of these students. Some countries (or regions) clearly envisage the opportunity this represents and have been strongly stimulating student mobility. There is a race for "brains", be it for professors at the end of their careers looking for new professional opportunities and/or the opportunity to return to their native countries, or for researchers at the beginning of their careers, looking for a place that might offer them a better future, or even for students, who seek more appealing alternatives. How will Brazil fare in this competition for talent?

Under the administration of President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian state has advocated the use of Free/Livre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) throughout the public sector. How did FLOSS adoption gain traction as a developmental strategy across a large federal bureaucracy that had embraced information technology policies supporting export-oriented growth and market liberalization during the 1990s? In an historical case study, I argue that the FLOSS agenda emerged as a result of the actions of a network of insurgent experts working within elite political, technical, and educational institutions. I trace the history of this mobilization and show how a dedicated network of experts brought about conditions for institutional transformation that contradicted prevailing neoliberal policy proscriptions. The Brazilian FLOSS insurgency offers insights into the means by which a group of elites endeavored to reframe debates about technology-driven economic growth around questions of state-led access to source code and knowledge.

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.

Do policies that seek to revive the prospects of minority languages transgress important liberal principles? The article will explore this question by focusing on one controversial aspect of language policy in Wales: the steps taken to set Welsh language requirements for some jobs in the public sector. This is a practice that has generated substantial debate, with opponents claiming that it undermines equality of opportunity in the field of employment and, in particular, transgresses the principle of appointing on the basis of merit. It will be argued here that such objections do not stand up to scrutiny. Efforts to promote a language's position in the field of employment do not undermine the principle of merit, but merely expand slightly on its meaning. Therefore, liberals should, in principle, be willing to endorse policies similar to those adopted in Wales in recent years. Nevertheless, the fact that these policies can be endorsed in principle does not mean that liberals would wish to exclude them completely from criticism. Rather, as will also be argued, the background conditions against which they are implemented and the degree to which these can influence an individual's linguistic ability should also be considered, and in the Welsh context, at least, this is an issue that may call for further attention.

Disability has become a pervasive and contested issue on college campuses, and instructors and students find themselves occupying physical and discursive spaces that hold great pedagogical potential. This essay pursues such a consideration. It examines one physically disabled student's staged performances of a personal narrative, her ethnography of a university's disabled student services office, an in-depth interview with the student, and the author's family experiences with disability to illustrate the ways a performative pedagogy offers insight into (dis)ability in the classroom. The analysis illuminates the classroom as a site for identity negotiation, performance as a tool to deconstruct and reconstruct notions of ability, and family relationships as an integral part of a critical communication pedagogy

Subjugated bodies continue to be missing from classrooms, faculty meetings, and educational structures everywhere. Where are the excluded bodies? Where is the untheorized visceral experience of everyday discrimination? Possibilities of inclusiveness must be viscerally felt, not simply disembodiedly spoken. Merely claiming to be a progressive teacher-writer isn't enough to achieve a decolonizing praxis. This claim needs to come from an embodied performance in the classroom, a place where teachers and students alike can perform the scars of oppression on their bodies. Teacher and student bodies, in-between the colonial and postcolonial experience, can then become more present in teaching and praxis.

Many critical pedagogy scholars claim that agency and dialogue in the classroom can only be achieved through students' engagement in verbal deliberation to "voice" against oppressive actions. As current discourses in the critical pedagogy literature tend to consider silence as a negative attribute in the classroom, I argue that they privilege a western construct and a very particular way of being and thinking. By using performative pedagogy as a theoretical framework, it is imperative to discuss the macro and micro implications of how discourses in the critical pedagogy literature affect how we understand silence theoretically and pedagogically.

This essay examines the role of technology and social media in the performance of decentered heteronormative bodily and pedagogical power. Today's teaching spaces occupy traditional, physical outlets but also imaginary, online gathering places such as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook that have become extensions of our pedagogical bodies. I argue that feminism and queer theory-united by Foucault's upheaval of norms-provide critical sites to engage this discussion. Where feminism has become accessible inside and outside the classroom, resistance to queer theory persists. I share some of my own experiences with bodily ambiguity via teaching and living with social media that I hope can bridge the accessibility gap to move toward an emancipatory theory of pedagogical bodies in the digital age.

This article examines a teacher educator's implementation of a pedagogy of multiliteracies in an adolescent literacy course. The purpose was to foster pre-service teachers' knowledge and dispositions to enact multiliteracies pedagogy. This article synthesizes the theories of multiliteracies pedagogy and Third Space to explore the opportunities and challenges presented by key learning experiences for pre-service teachers' development of knowledge about and dispositions towards multiliteracies pedagogy. This article argues that emphasizing the Situated Practice and Critical Framing components of multiliteracies pedagogy can promote pre-service teachers' productive negotiations of the conflicts they experience in developing dispositions towards multiliteracies pedagogy.

This article focuses on how three dimensions of critical democracy preparation (place-based geographical knowledge, social and political awareness of American Indian history and culture, and orientations conducive to the development of personal connections with American Indians) were impacted by different instructional approaches introduced when implementing an innovative Indian Education for All education program at a K-5 school in Montana. Student-learning outcomes were measured through pre- and post-intervention tests of place-based and social/political knowledge and a short survey of personal orientations. Instructional approaches across first-grade through fifth-grade were identified through interviews and participant observation. In their own ways, participating teachers, working in partnership with Salish tribal educators, demonstrated that Indigenous education contributes to critical-democracy learning. The specific outcomes of the Indigenous-education program varied according to the different instructional approaches teachers elected to pursue. Instructional comparisons showed that combining place-based instruction with guided reflection on personal connections with American Indian people through "boundary-breaking" approaches that aim to bring about critical consciousness ignited the most impressive changes in learners' orientations. The research findings offer particularly valuable insights for teachers striving for equity and excellence in elementary schools with American Indian populations.

Changes related to globalization have resulted in the growing separation of individuals in late modern societies from traditional bases of social solidarity such as parties, churches, and other mass organizations. One sign of this growing individualization is the organization of individual action in terms of meanings assigned to lifestyle elements resulting in the personalization of issues such as climate change, labour standards, and the quality of food supplies. Such developments bring individuals' own narratives to the fore in the mobilization process, often requiring organizations to be more flexible in their definitions of issues. This personalization of political action presents organizations with a set of fundamental challenges involving potential trade-offs between flexibility and effectiveness. This paper analyses how different protest networks used digital media to engage individuals in mobilizations targeting the 2009 G20 London Summit during the global financial crisis. The authors examine how these different communication processes affected the political capacity of the respective organizations and networked coalitions. In particular, the authors explore whether the coalition offering looser affiliation options for individuals displays any notable loss of public engagement, policy focus (including mass media impact), or solidarity network coherence. This paper also examines whether the coalition offering more rigid collective action framing and fewer personalized social media affordances displays any evident gain in the same dimensions of mobilization capacity. In this case, the evidence suggests that the more personalized collective action process maintains high levels of engagement, agenda focus, and network strength.

This article interrogates the notion of Web 2.0, understanding it through three related conceptual lenses: (1) as a set of social relations, (2) as a mode of production, and (3) as a set of values. These conceptual framings help in understanding the discursive, technological, and social forces that are at play in Web 2.0 architectures. Based on research during a two-year period, the second part of this article applies these lenses to the case of the Human Rights Portal, a Web portal designed to leverage the participatory knowledge production ethos of Web 2.0 for human rights organizations. This section discusses the design process and the ways in which the discourse of Web 2.0 as parsed through the three lenses described informed this process.

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.

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.