Towards Discursive Education

As technology continues to advance, the use of computers and the Internet in educational environments has immensely increased. But just how effective has their use been in enhancing children's learning? In this thought-provoking book, Christina E. Erneling conducts a thorough investigation of scholarly journal articles on how computers and the Internet affect learning. She critiques the influential pedagogical theories informing the use of computers in schools - in particular those of Jean Piaget and 'theory of mind' psychology. Erneling introduces and argues for a discursive approach to learning based on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the psychology of Lev Vygotsky. This book not only addresses an urgent pedagogical problem in depth, but also challenges dominant assumptions about learning in both developmental psychology and cognitive science.

Accessible yet theoretically rich, this landmark text introduces key concepts and issues in critical discourse analysis and situates these within the field of educational research. The book invites readers to consider the theories and methods of three major traditions in critical discourse studies – discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, and multimodal discourse analysis -- through the empirical work of leading scholars in the field. Beyond providing a useful overview, it contextualizes CDA in a wide range of learning environments and identifies how CDA can shed new insights on learning and social change. Detailed analytic procedures are included – to demystify the process of conducting CDA, to invite conversations about issues of trustworthiness of interpretations and their value to educational contexts, and to encourage researchers to build on the scholarship in critical discourse studies. This edition features a new structure; a touchstone chapter in each section by a recognized expert (Gee, Fairclough, Kress); and a stronger international focus on both theories and methods. NEW! Companion Website with Chapter Extensions; Interviews; Bibliographies; and Resources for Teaching Critical Discourse Analysis.

The authors of this volume claim that mathematics can be usefully re-conceptualized as a special form of communication. As a result, the familiar discussion of mental schemes, misconceptions, and cognitive conflict is transformed into a consideration of activity, patterns of interaction, and communication failure. By equating thinking with communicating, the discursive approach also deconstructs the problematic dichotomy between "individual" and "social" research perspectives.

This edited volume demonstrates some of the potential contributions of discourse analytic approaches to the study of education policy and its implementation within particular policy contexts. Contributing authors provide a range of perspectives, examining education policy using both micro-analytic traditions and more macro-analytic traditions. With examples of research focused on various stages of the policy process from agenda-setting and policy-making to implementation and media representations, this volume will appeal to scholars engaged in research at the intersection of education policy and discourse analysis, and to students with specific interests in education policy and qualitative research methods.

Discursive Practice is a theory of the linguistic and socio-cultural characteristics of recurring episodes of face-to-face interaction; episodes that have social and cultural significance to a community of speakers. This book examines the discursive practice approach to language-in-interaction, explicating the consequences of grounding language use and language learning in a view of social realities as discursively constructed, of meanings as negotiated through interaction, of the context-bound nature of discourse, and of discourse as social action. The book also addresses how participants’ abilities in a specific discursive practice may be learned, taught, and assessed.

Discourse in English Language Education is designed to introduce students to the major concepts and issues in discourse analysis and its applications to language education, drawing on the key research from a range of approaches. This will be essential reading for upper undergraduates and postgraduates with interests in applied linguistics, TESOL and mother tongue language education.

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Classroom Discourse and the Space of Learning is about learning in schools and the central role of language in learning. The investigations of learning it reports are based on two premises: First, whatever you are trying to learn, there are certain necessary conditions for succeeding--although you cannot be sure that learning will take place when those conditions are met, you can be sure that no learning will occur if they are not. The limits of what is possible to learn is what the authors call "the space of learning." Second, language plays a central role in learning--it does not merely convey meaning, it also creates meaning. The book explicates the necessary conditions for successful learning and employs investigations of classroom discourse data to demonstrate how the space of learning is linguistically constituted in the classroom. Classroom Discourse and the Space of Learning: *makes the case that an understanding of how the space of learning is linguistically constituted in the classroom is best achieved through investigating "classroom discourse" and that finding out what the conditions are for successful learning and bringing them about should be the teacher's primary professional task. Thus, it is fundamentally important for teachers and student teachers to be given opportunities to observe different teachers teaching the same thing, and to analyze and reflect on whether the classroom discourse in which they are engaged maximizes or minimizes the conditions for learning; *is both more culturally situated and more generalizable than many other studies of learning in schools. Each case of classroom teaching clearly demonstrates how the specific language, culture, and pedagogy molds what is happening in the classroom, yet at the same time it is possible to generalize from these culturally specific examples the necessary conditions that must be met for the development of any specific capability regardless of where the learning is taking place and what other conditions might be present; and *encompasses both theory and practice--providing a detailed explication of the theory of learning underlying the analyses of classroom teaching reported, along with close analyses of a number of authentic cases of classroom teaching driven by classroom discourse data which have practical relevance for teachers. Intended for researchers and graduate students in education, teacher educators, and student teachers, Classroom Discourse and the Space of Learning is practice- and content-oriented, theoretical, qualitative, empirical, and focused on language, and links teaching and learning in significant new ways.