In looking to the future, some writers on religious education (RE) have attempted to evaluate current approaches to the subject. Some have characterised any significant change in approach as a "paradigm shift", a term derived from Thomas Kuhn's work in the philosophy of science. This article examines the uses of the terms…

Parent-school engagement is widely embraced as a policy and educational ideal, yet to date there are few studies of how teacher education prepares students for this important aspect of their professional lives. In this paper, we consider findings from a recent Australian study that explored how the issue of parent-school relations is currently…

This paper documents a study investigating co-construction of knowledge by doctoral students in an online learning community. In this study 12 students participated in the coursework and thesis proposal development stages of a doctoral program offered by a research-intensive university in New Zealand. Socio-cultural and social constructivist…

Children's interests and thinking emanate from their daily lived experiences in their families, communities and cultures. This paper substantiates the view that the construct of "funds of knowledge", understood through the lens of "cultural repertoires of practice", provides an analytical tool for early years teachers to…

This article examines the subjective life experiences of racial minority Xhosa speakers and the factors that contribute to their continued poor academic performance in a previously Whites-only school in South Africa. Vygotskian sociocultural perspective in relation to creating a democratic educational system and Bronfenbrenner's biosystemic theory…

In qualitative research on Americans in study abroad contexts, female gender often emerges as problematic, with young women portrayed as hapless victims of sexual harassment. The assumption underlying interpretation of these studies appears to maintain that female students are victimized because they find themselves in places where inherently…

This study followed a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design. Phase I involved the collection of quantitative data to examine inservice teachers' (N = 69) attitudes about language and linguistic diversity as well as their teacher education coursework. All participants were graduates from the same teacher education program. Phase II included…

This paper discusses how teachers in a bilingual education programme see their pedagogies and interactions influencing student connection to the languages of the bilingual programme. The teacher perception of the classroom is explored because the classroom is one of the principal settings in which the students negotiate their bilingual identities.…

Peer feedback is widely used in second and foreign language writing contexts. While second language (L2) proficiency is likely to be an important factor in determining peers' ability to give and utilize feedback, its contribution has been relatively under-researched. In the present study, 54 undergraduates in a foreign language writing context…

We draw on Rampton's "Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents" (2014. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge) notion of "crossing" to explore contestations in ethnolinguistic, cultural and racial affiliations at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a university built for "Coloureds" in apartheid South Africa, but…

This study suggests an integrative qualitative methodological framework for capturing complexity in mentoring activity. Specifically, the model examines how historical developments of a discipline direct mentors' mediation of professional knowledge through the language that they use. The model integrates social activity theory and a framework of…

This article explores the placement practices of students into different educational programs in PreK-first grade, including two bilingual education programs and an ESL "mainstream" classroom. We then examine the discourse practices of four third-grade teachers and the school principal. Our findings suggest that initial program placement…

Despite the well-known educational possibilities afforded by "Rhythm And Poetry" (RAP) for the development of musical, lyrical and critical skills [Morrell, E., & Duncan-Andrade, J. M. R. (2002). Promoting Academic Literacy with Urban Youth through Engaging Hip-hop Culture. "The English Journal," 91(6), 88-92. Retrieved…

Following the calls for increased research on the educational experiences of Chicana/o community college students, and the development of culturally applicable measures for communities of color, this study examined the utility and the applicability of the Cultural Congruity Scale (CCS) and University Environment Scale (UES) for use with Chicana/o…

The study presented in this article explores the ways in which discursive-technologies shape interaction in "digitally-mediated" educational settings in terms of affordances and constraints for the participants. Our multi-scale sociocultural-dialogical analysis of the interactional order in the online sessions of an "Italian for…