1,720,956 research outputs found
Using semiotic resources to teach and assess scientific concepts in a bilingual Namibian primary school: A socio-cultural discourse analysis
Get PDFThe Namibian school system subscribes to a separatist language policy and ideology that advocates the use of monolingual English as Medium of instruction (MO1) as well as conducting all written assessments from Grade 4 and beyond in English. Despite Namibia being a multilingual country, the Namibian monolingualist Language in Education Policy (LiEP) makes no provision to accommodate multilingual practices and to fulfill the linguistic needs of learners from linguistically diverse backgrounds, who lack proficiency in English. The language separatist ideologies sanctioned in the Namibian LiEP as well as in science written assessments need further consideration in order to embrace language as an open system that is fluid, evolving, and hybrid. Given the complexities of the language policy and pedagogical challenges of language of instruction choices in the Namibian classrooms, I wanted to investigate how primary school Science teachers and learners meet the demand of the Namibian curriculum of Learner Centered Education (LCE) and the ideologies of monolingualism advocated in the Namibian Language in Education Policy. I undertook a small-scale, ethnographically informed case study approach to examine the nature of discourse employed by a Grade 4 teacher and his learners (aged 10- 12) in a bilingual Namibian classroom as they engaged in science classroom discourse, exploring how these specific discourses support or constrain learners' opportunities to construct scientific meaning. I combined various theoretical resources from a sociocultural approach to language as social practice, Bakhtinian heteroglossia and dialogism, neo-Vygotskian ideas of what constitutes the learning of scientific concepts, together with the recent theorising of dynamic bi/multilingualism to understand this phenomenon in depth. The data include video and audio recordings of lessons, field notes, learning materials, policy document, photographs , interviews, written work (drawing and writing) as well learners' written science assessments. The data was analysed through sociocultural discourse and multimodal analytical methods. This study's findings suggest that in contrast with dialogic practices, monologic practices were dominant, as evidenced by the constrained Initiation Response Feedback (IRF) discourse structure. This suggests that English monolingual policy places constraints on bilingual learners to use their multiple linguistic recourses flexibly and thereby silenced their voices in the classroom. This implies that the struggle to break away from rote leaning towards conceptual understanding through exploratory talk remains elusive for the Namibian bilingual learners. Therefore, I suggest that one cannot argue for dialogism or for conceptually rigorous instruction in scientific concepts if the learners cannot understand the language of instruction. The discussion of dialogism and multimodality as a sole vehicle for raising the quality of science teaching should be further complimented with a consideration of deliberate use of multilingual and multimodal meaning making which enables teachers to value their learners' linguistic resources that they brought to school to enable effective science teaching and learning. The findings of this study revealed how the affordances of multiple linguistic resources and modes have positive effects for emergent bilingual learners to gain nuanced understanding of the scientific knowledge, regardless of their limited proficiency in English. I will therefore argue that the prevailing monoglossic orientations to the current Namibian education system is a major contributing factor preventing Namibia to realise its' educational goals of access, quality, equity, and social justice. There is a need to support learners from linguistically diverse backgrounds through a deliberate inclusive language policy that harnesses their multilingualism and their cultural identity to enhance equal education access to all Namibian children. Clear direction is warranted on how teachers can publicly acknowledge and sustain their learners' linguistic and cultural resources in science written assessments
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Language Ideologies and the Use of Mother Tongues as the Medium of Instruction and Learning in Junior Primary Schools: A Case Study of Parents and Teachers in a Namibian School
No full textIn the Namibian education system, teaching in the junior primary is supposed to be done in the learners’ mother tongue. However, there is always controversy on adopting a language to be used as a medium of instruction (MoI) due to the multi-ethnic and multilingualism of the Namibian society. To make matters worse, parents equally cast doubt on enrolling their children in schools that uses mother tongue as an MoI. Framed within the qualitative case-study orientation, this research investigated: parents’ and teachers’ language ideologies and beliefs; the factors that informed the embodied and expressed language ideologies and beliefs of parents’ and teachers’; and how these dominant language ideologies and belief systems informed parents’ and teachers’ choice of language of instruction and the general implementation of the language policy in a Namibian school. The study found that both parents and teachers harbored monolingual ideological belief systems that did not only construct and perpetuate an “English-only” language zone but also banished all mother tongue languages from the school premises. Not only do the findings point to the hegemonic positioning of the English language in the minds of parents, teachers, and school principals as the only language that can lead to success, but its violation was punishable in a derogatory manner. The study concludes that, among others, parents, teachers, and school principals’ language ideologies and beliefs were shaped and informed by the prevailing English language hegemony. The liberal and duality stance of the Namibian language policy, and its decentralization, partly resulted in parents, teachers, and school principals’ neglect of the multilingualism and heterogeneity that the very same policy purports to advocate. The study recommends raising parents’ and teachers’ awareness of embracing the heteroglossia of language practices and for the ministry of education to consider a more inclusive language policy
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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