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    Teacher cognition of grade 8 teachers on teaching speaking in English as a foreign language in The Faroe Islands and its impact on teachers’ pedagogical praxis: seven case studies

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    Abstract Teaching is influenced by myriad factors and a significant player in this context is the teacher and his/her cognition. Teacher cognition is ‘the unobservable cognitive dimension of teaching – what teachers know, believe, and think’ (Borg, 2003). In recent decades, much research has been conducted on English as a foreign language teaching and teacher cognition, which continues to highlight the crucial significance of the role of teacher cognition in teaching.Research in teacher cognition covers various aspects of teaching language and language skills, with grammar enjoying predominance, while language skills, particularly speaking and listening, play second fiddle. Teaching speaking in English as a foreign language is important as foreign language learners desire to learn to speak the language and use it actively to communicate with peers and others.The purpose of my qualitative case study is to: glean teacher cognition about teaching speaking in English as a foreign language teaching of seven grade 8 teachers in The Faroe Islands; ascertain the impact of teacher cognition on their teaching speaking praxis; and attempt to identify the reflection of the ‘state of the art’ in teaching speaking in English as a foreign language. The case study attempts to identify themes and categorise teacher behaviour and events rather than testing theory or hypotheses. It is a collective parallel case study, where seven cases are viewed concurrently. This case study attempts to add to the significant and under-researched field of teacher cognition on teaching speaking.Semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, observations and document analysis were used to elicit data to fulfil research aims. The results show that teacher cognition of grade 8 teachers does impact teaching speaking and congruence between the two appears to be the norm, with lesser representation of incongruence.The congruence between teacher cognition and teaching speaking is a result of two factors: firstly, the strong influence of ‘apprenticeship of observation’ i.e. the influence of teachers’ personal experiences as students from years of school, university and teacher education, which influences the way they teach and think about teaching. Secondly, teacher interpretation of teaching speaking as facilitating student spoken performance in the classroom, i.e. ‘doing speaking’ instead of teaching speaking i.e. using specific strategies to teach students to speak.The teacher education curriculum up to 2008 in the department of Education in The University of The Faroe Islands, to which most of the participants belong, did not include second language acquisition theories or language pedagogy. The incongruence therefore arises from the teachers functioning based on ‘apprenticeship of observation’ and experiential knowledge gleaned from teaching experience to create their models of teaching speaking. As for the post 2008 participants, new and inexperienced teachers are more likely to be concerned with classroom management before being able to practise subject pedagogy when teaching a language.Though congruence predominates, there is minor incidence of incongruence between teacher cognition and teaching speaking, which may indicate the core-peripheral beliefs dichotomy. Core beliefs find expression in teaching and are chosen over peripheral beliefs, which account for the gap between cognition and teaching. Phipps and Borg (2009) posit that core beliefs are experience-based and tend to be more stable. They exert an influence greater than that of peripheral beliefs, which are theory-based and have not been tried and tested in practice by teachers to become part of the teaching repertoire. In the case of feedback, grade 8 teachers desist from using it actively as the core belief that feedback may discourage student participation in class overwhelms the peripheral belief about the usefulness of feedback for student learning.The ‘Teaching-speaking cycle’ of Goh and Burns (2012) has been chosen to identify the reflection of the ‘state of the art’ in grade 8 praxis in teaching speaking. It subsumes earlier teaching speaking models and advocates a holistic approach to teaching speaking with specific activities to be carried out successively to promote the teaching of speaking. There is sporadic reflection of aspects of the model in grade 8 teaching speaking praxis, emphasising that there is ‘doing speaking’ i.e. opportunities for speaking rather than teaching speaking.The study underlines the pivotal role of teacher education in equipping teachers for their profession and proactively helping pre-and post-service teachers to be critically self-aware of the influence of teacher cognition on their praxis. It pinpoints the importance of continued professional development for teachers during their careers and makes a case for educational research to impact teaching and make a difference in education

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

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    “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

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    We 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

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We 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

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We 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 Under Sail The Imagination of Jack London, 1893-1902

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    In Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Spirit Truth -- 2. From Absorption to Theatricality and Back Again -- 3. "I Will Build a New Present" -- 4. Sons as Authors -- 5. Fathers as Publishers -- 6. The Daughter as Author -- 7. Lovers as Authors -- 8. At Sea with the Family -- 9. Yellow News, Yellow Stories -- 10. The Return Home -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About Jay WilliamsIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
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