This article explores teachers' identity formation through a narrative inquiry of the professional identity of an EFL teacher, Minfang, in the People's Republic of China. Drawing on Wenger's (1998) social theory of identity formation as a dual process of identification and negotiation of meanings, it examines the lived experience of Minfang as an…

Research suggests that females are vastly under-represented in the upper echelons of sport organizations. As such, the purpose of the current article was to apply a symbolic interactionist perspective to the lacking presence of women in leadership positions of sport organizations. The model proposes that gender-role meanings and stereotypes…

Instructor persona in online discussion may set the tone for a variety of course outcomes. Instructors establish persona via both presence (amount of instructor posts) and position (interaction relative to those in the student role). In this paper, three online classes were studied using positioning theory as a grounding framework to elicit ways…

In this brief essay the authors reflect on the value of community participation and cultural adaptation in their evolving research on American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) infant and toddler development. They describe three concerns identified by their AI/AN community partners in adapting established research methodologies to work in AI/AN…

This paper reports on a study of disagreement strategies used by Japanese learners of English (JLEs) studying at language schools in New Zealand. The study stemmed from an observation that JLEs were unwilling to express disagreements in exchanges with high-power (+P) interlocutors, possibly due to the threat of face-loss and the consequences of…

Decentralization occupies a prominent place on the policy agenda at international level and, within many countries, at national level. It regularly forms part of an overall package of reform of the public service, which has been summarized under the concept of "new public management" (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2000). This package also…

In higher education, issues of "in loco parentis" have been most often discussed in connection with campus administrative policies. College writing teachers need to reflect, however, on the ways they conceivably exercise parental authority in their own classrooms, through such models as the Stern Father and the Nurturing Mother. (Contains 26…

This paper uses ethnographic observation and in-depth interview to look at the ways in which an English-dominant school in California, USA inhibits the fulfilment of the goals of its dual immersion "strand" programme. Taking a Bakhtinian perspective on discourses, and leaning on Bourdieu's concept of "linguistic capital", the…

Resource-dependence theory is a theory of organization(s) that seeks to explain organizational and interorganizational behavior in terms of those critical resources that an organization must have in order to survive and function. The theory focuses on the following: resources; the flow or exchange of resources between organizations; those…

The process of reexamining and reinventing a company demands a new organizational theory and, at the same time, a critical evaluation of the limits of existing theory. This book argues for change strategies that are aimed at creating more permeable boundaries within organizations. Four major sections focus on one of the four types of…

One composition instructor's purpose is to address, or perhaps, re-dress, the balance of the relationship between teacher and student using a dialogic framework that provides for reciprocity. Her aim is to provoke, to seduce (persuade through passion), and to awaken their incipient sense of wonder at the world and the language that creates this…

Findings from a study that examined high schools involved in school restructuring to determine the effect of restructuring on the educational experiences of persons along the axis of oppression are presented in this paper. A second focus was to explore the utility of feminist poststructural theories in educational administration research. The…

This study examines restructuring from principals' perspectives. It explores restructuring as a "deal" between a district and individual schools, wherein the school receives greater autonomy over budgets, personnel, and school policies, in return for stricter accountability for results, usually defined in terms of student achievement.…

Communication among teaching assistants can be as complicated as communication among full time faculty members, so that power relationships influence the rhetoric they use when they talk about being students, teachers, and professionals. Analysis of the political dimensions of teaching assistant interaction in the English department at the…

In this book, eight contributors examine issues related to the likely effects of the decentralization of school governance on educational practice. Two major themes emerge in the book. The first (chapters 1 through 4) is that governance reforms in education may have little to do with what actually happens in schools, but have much to do with…