Providing high-quality education for students with emergent proficiency in the language of instruction (referred to here as multilingual students) presents a challenge to inclusion for educational systems the world over. In Austria, a new German language support model was implemented in the school year 2018/19 which provides language support in separate classrooms up to 20 h a week. Since its implementation, the model has been strongly criticized for excluding multilingual students from the mainstream classroom, which (...) is argued to reinforce the educational disadvantages that they face. The study presented here provides unprecedented qualitative insight into how schooling for students within the so-called German language support classes (GLSC) was organized during the COVID-19 pandemic. It builds on results of a previous large-scale quantitative study (n= 3,400 teachers), which was conducted during the first lockdown (spring 2020) and indicated a high risk of exclusion for marginalized students, especially for multilingual students in GLSC. To gain deeper insights into the situation of these students during school closures, 37 teachers who work in these classes at both primary and lower-secondary schools in Vienna were interviewed, of which 18 interviews were considered for analysis. The interviews focus on the situation during the first and second school closures in the city of Vienna. A thematic analysis of the interview data reveals teachers’ perceptions of aspects which harmed or promoted inclusion for students in GLSC during these periods of school closure. Teachers’ perceptions of the most harming factors for students included strong language barriers between teachers and students, restricted access to technical equipment and supportive learning spaces, and low parental engagement. A development that promoted inclusion of these students was the option to allow them to come to school during the second school closure. Since existing studies on the schooling of students during school closures have hardly addressed the situation of students in GLSC, this study contributes to closing this research gap. (shrink)

The concept of a comprehensive language curriculum provides an important basis for the development of student's plurilingual competence. It ensures the inclusion of all students' language skills in language education, the creation of cross-linguistic connections, and the development of language awareness and awareness of language learning. Factors that influence the implementation of this concept at the school level are, amongst others: school leadership, collaboration among school staff, appropriate teaching methods, and beliefs and attitudes of all members of the school (...) as an educational community. To determine possibilities for the implementation of comprehensive language curricula in Croatian primary schools, qualitative methods were used to investigate beliefs of language teachers, professional associates, and school principals about the development of students' plurilingual competence, as well as language teachers' teaching practice and the ways plurilingual education is supported at school level. Data analysis shows that the participants mostly have monolingual beliefs when it comes to the development of students' plurilingual competence. Also, although most teachers state that they make comparisons between languages in their teaching, a systematic cross-linguistic comparison and cooperation in the planning and implementation of language education are almost completely absent. (shrink)

This volume brings together for the first time a collection of studies that investigates how multilingual speakers construct emotions in their talk as a joint discursive practice. The contributions draw on the well established, converging traditions of conversation analysis, discursive psychology, and membership categorization analysis together with recent work on interactional storytelling, stylization, and multimodal analysis. By adopting a discursive approach to emotion in multilingual talk, the volume breaks with the dominant view of emotions as cognitive and intra-psychological (...) phenomena and their study through self-report. Through detailed analyses of original recorded data, the chapters examine how participants produce emotion-implicative actions, identities, stances, and morality through their interactional work in ordinary face-to-face conversation, computer-mediated interaction, institutional talk in medical, educational, and broadcast media settings, and in research interviews. The volume addresses itself to students and researchers interested in language and emotion, multilingual speakers and settings, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. (shrink)

This book presents the methodological framework of combining Multimodal Conversation Analysis (MCA) with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to interpretively analyse translanguaging practices in educational contexts. Beginning with an overview of the three uses of translanguaging - translanguaging as a theory of language, as a pedagogical practice and as an analytical perspective - the book goes on to critically examine the different methodological approaches for analysing translanguaging practices in multilingual classroom interactions. It explains how MCA and IPA are useful methodologies (...) for understanding how and why translanguaging practices are constructed by participants in the classroom and discusses types of data collected and data collection procedures. The author, Kevin W. H. Tai, shows how combining these approaches enables researchers to study how translanguaging practices are constructed in multilingual classrooms and how teachers make sense of their own translanguaging practices at particular moments of classroom interaction. This detailed and concise guide is indispensable for students, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers from across the globe, particularly those working in the fields of applied linguistics and language education. (shrink)

This article leverages interview data from students of Chinese who enrolled at a UK university but pursued a period of study abroad in China, aiming to delve into their negotiation of language identities during their overseas experience. By employing Block’s structural model in our discourse analysis, this research reveals the dynamic interplay between agency and structure, shedding light on the intricate process of language learning and identity formation. The findings underscore that structural contexts are integral to shaping students’ (...) agency, highlighting specific structural spheres that pose challenges to their development of Chinese language and multilingual identities. These spheres encompass the linguistic and cultural dominance of English as well as Chinese hospitality practices. Rooted in their habitus, participants’ preconceived notions of the Chinese language and cultural aspects influence their journey, yielding either positive or negative impacts. Furthermore, participants’ backgrounds and prior language learning experiences significantly contribute to their identity development. In advocating for a comprehensive approach, this study emphasises the integration of both agency and structural contexts as necessary to fully comprehend the intricate process of identity development. (shrink)

Background: Besides regulatory learning skills, learning also requires students to relate to their social context and negotiate it as they transition and adjust to medical training. As such, there is a need to consider and explore the role of social and cultural aspects in student learning, particularly in problem-based learning, where the learning paradigm differs from what most students have previously experienced. In this article, we report on the findings of a study exploring first-year medical students’ experiences (...) during the first semester of an undergraduate problem-based learning medical program at an African medical school. Method: We employed a qualitative case study approach using in-depth interviews with 23 first-year medical students. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25 years. All students were bi/multilingual (some spoke three to five languages), with English as the learning language. We conducted an inductive thematic analysis to systematically identify and analyze patterns in the data using the Braun and Clarke framework. Results: Before medical school, students worked hard to compete for admission to medical school, were primarily taught using a teacher-centered approach, and preferred working alone. At the beginning of medical school, students found it challenging to understand the problem-based learning process, the role of the case, speaking and working effectively in a group, managing a heavy workload, and taking increased responsibility for their learning. By the end of the first semester, most students were handling the workload better, were more comfortable with their peers and facilitators, and appreciated the value of the problem-based learning approach. Conclusions: Our study highlights the importance of interrogating contextual sociocultural factors that could cause tension when implementing problem-based learning in non-western medical schools. Adjustment to problem-based learning requires a conceptual and pedagogic shift towards learner-centered practice, particularly concerning self direction, the role of the case, and collaborative learning. As such, there is a need to develop and implement research informed learning development programs that enable students to reflect on their sociocultural beliefs and practices, and enhance their regulatory learning competence to optimize meaningful and early engagement with the problem based learning process. (shrink)

The challenge of updating the existing curriculum to meet the requirements of blended, interactive and gamified approaches is complex. This article presents the design and results of the application of a gamified activity that was used to enrich a blended Philosophy course taught for two years and taken by more than 450 sophomore students in a large public university in Russia. The combination of social search with multilingual communication became an important educational experience for the participating students.

This study presents a web-based sentence comprehension test aimed at identifying high school students who are at risk for a language delay. By assessing linguistic skills on a sample of high school students with Italian as an L2 and their monolingual peers, attending a vocational school, we were able to identify a subgroup of L2 students with consistent difficulties in sentence comprehension, though their reading skills were within the average range. The same subgroup revealed to experience a (...) lack of support within the school context, suggesting that poor L2 skills might be a critical variable to consider in order to identify students at risk for school exclusion. Regarding the test, accuracy to the on-line sentence comprehension task was significantly predicted by reading abilities and vocabulary skills, thus indicating that this test might represent a rapid but efficient way to assess linguistic abilities at school. We recommend that establishing a valid and practical procedure for the evaluation of linguistic skills in bilingual students who struggle with their L2 is the first step towards promoting social inclusion in the multilingual classroom, in order to increase their ability to actively participate in school and social activities. (shrink)

This study investigates the strategies for learning Cantonese that are adopted by non-Chinese English-speaking ethnic minority university students in Hong Kong. The aim is to identify the challenges these students face in applying their strategies to learn Cantonese and to explore their learning experiences when implementing them. Drawing on questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews with 30 EM students at a university in Hong Kong, this study identifies these learners’ strategies, elicits their views on the use of these (...) strategies and examines their learning experiences. The findings suggest that EM students are “medium strategy users,” with social strategies being their most commonly used types of learning strategies, followed by compensation and metacognitive strategies. The more proficient Cantonese users tend to use metacognitive strategies that promote planning and are goal-oriented. Taken together, this study sheds light on the complex interplay of sociocultural variables in shaping EM university students’ Cantonese learning experience in Hong Kong. It also highlights the importance of analysing EM students’ linguistic repertoire and the local language ecology in understanding Cantonese learning in a multilingual context like Hong Kong. (shrink)

Defining a nurse as literate is disciplinary and contextual, linked to professional identity formation, and an issue impacting patient safety. Literacy and language proficiency are concepts assessed through examining skills in four pillars: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. This article explores how literacy is not only a practice issue but inextricably intertwined with issues of race, equity, diversity, and inclusiveness in our profession—both in regulatory policy and classroom pedagogy. In making the argument that language is a proxy for race, three (...) cases of language and literacy will be presented. First, the deficit discourse of multilingual student struggle is stereotyped to the presence or absence of an accent, with multilingual student needs often treated homogeneously in disregard of population heterogenous abilities. Second, regulatory policies for language testing internationally educated nurses are discriminatory with testing context bearing little relationship to the language needs of nursing practice. Third, that the myth of “one standard English” results in racist evaluation practices of student academic performance. Recommendations are made for reframing how language and literacy are viewed in nursing education and regulation of practice with a focus on acknowledgment of one's personal relationship to racial issues and emphasizing the need for a change in mindset toward racialized multilingual students and writers. (shrink)

A growing body of research on culturally and linguistically responsive social studies instruction continues to identify essential understandings regarding the teaching and learning of social studies among multilingual students. Yet a preponderance of these studies utilize ethnographic and other highly contextualized qualitative methods. In order to make this growing body of knowledge more accessible to a larger audience of researchers and educators, the present study examined pedagogical approaches and areas of curricular emphasis that social studies teachers reported using (...) in the landmark Survey on the Status of Social Studies. The results of the present study deepen insights into the differentiation that social studies teachers of emergent bilingual students employ. Data analysis reveals that teachers with beginning emergent bilingual students, teachers with intermediate emergent bilingual students, and teachers without emergent bilingual students reported using instructional strategies and engaging curricular topics with different frequencies. The findings align common social studies approaches to the scholarship on culturally and linguistically responsive social studies instruction to provide a typology that extends the literature for social studies educators. (shrink)

Over the last decades, migration across Europe has continued to increase. Consequently, offering educational support for migrant students in the schools of host countries has been an extensively debated issue across Europe and further afield, especially in countries with a history of immigration. However, less is known about how education systems in the ‘new’ immigration countries have responded to the needs of recently arrived migrants. This article focuses on language support measures set up for migrant students in state-funded (...) schools in the Republic of Ireland and Spain – both multilingual countries with more than one official language and with a heterogeneous migrant population. In reviewing educational policy and practice in these jurisdictions in the areas of language support for migrants, this article seeks to contribute to the debate on challenges involved in supporting language acquisition by migrant students in formal educational settings. (shrink)

Framed within the broader theoretical context of social semiotics, we attempt to show how university students communicate using a variety of unique means, in particular social contexts. We privilege Pennycook and Otsuji’s semiotic assemblages, Jimaima and Simungala’s semiotic creativity, and the notion of semiotic economy as critical ingredients that conspire to give rise to the unique and complex coinages and innovations constituting students’ repertoires. We argue that, born out of creativity, the students’ repertoires are semiotically and economically (...) charged discourses that generate extended narratives such that more is realized with less. We show that this reality undoubtedly constitutes a multi-semiotic meaning-making endeavor that enacts and sustains students’ imagined and lived experiences in real sociocultural, historical, and political spaces in the multilingual landscapes of university campuses. (shrink)

Ernest Gellner was a multilingual polymath who set the agenda in the study of nationalism and the sociology of Islam for an entire generation of academics and students. This definitive biography follows his trajectory from his early years in Prague, Paris and England to international success as a philosopher and public intellectual. Known both for his highly integrated philosophy of modernity and for combining a respect for nationalism with an appreciation for science, Gellner was passionate in his defence (...) of reason against every for of relativism. (shrink)

New Zealand is a multilingual and multicultural society, where English, Maori, and the New Zealand sign language are designated as its official languages. However, some heritage languages are also taught either within or outside the national education system. During the past decade, an increasing number of students have chosen Mandarin Chinese as an additional language because of its fast-growing importance. To date, studies regarding CAL are mainly based on the mainstream Chinese programs or online platforms, with less attention (...) paid to other types of teaching contexts where there also exist many potential challenges awaiting teachers. To fill in this gap, this study, based on a teaching program consisting of two families in New Zealand, explored the trajectories of a CAL teacher’s emotional labor for 47 weeks to understand how she managed her emotions when she taught the language as well as balanced the relationship among the three parties: the institution, the two families, and herself. Narrative inquiry was used as a methodological approach. The data involved written and spoken narratives. Using inductive and deductive thematic analysis, findings revealed her different understandings of the emotional labor in the two families, respectively, during the program. Further analysis of the data revealed some factors that impacted her emotional labor and how they impacted her teaching in a family-based context. We concluded our study with a discussion of the implications of these findings for teaching CAL in similar contexts. (shrink)

A one-of-a-kind reference to the international vocabulary of the humanities This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy—or any—translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that (...) influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages—English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more.The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas. Covers close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms that defy easy translation between languages and cultures Includes terms from more than a dozen languages Entries written by more than 150 distinguished thinkers Available in English for the first time, with new contributions by Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more Contains extensive cross-references and bibliographies An invaluable resource for students and scholars across the humanities. (shrink)

We investigated cross-language influences from the first and second languages in third language processing, to examine how order of acquisition and proficiency modulate the degree of cross-language influences, and whether these cross-language influences manifest differently in online and offline measures of L3 processing. The study focused on morpho-syntactic processing of English as an L3 among Arabic-Hebrew-English university student trilinguals. Importantly, both L1 and L2 of participants are typologically distant from L3, which allows overcoming confounds of previous research. Performance of trilinguals (...) was compared to that of native English monolingual controls. To investigate the source of cross-language influences, critical stimuli were ungrammatical sentences in English, which when translated could be grammatical in L1, in L2 or in both. Thus, the L3 morpho-syntactic structures included in the study were a mismatch with L1, a mismatch with L2, a Double mismatch, with both L1 and L2, or a no mismatch condition. Participants read the English sentences while their eye-movements were recorded, and they also performed grammaticality judgments following each sentence. Across both measures, cross-language influences were assessed by comparing the performance of the trilinguals in each of the critical interference conditions to the no-interference condition, and by comparing their performance to that of the monolingual controls. L1 interference was evident in first pass sentence reading, and marginally in offline grammaticality judgment, and L2 interference was robust across second pass reading and grammaticality judgments. These results suggest that either L1 or the L2 can be the source of cross-language influences in L3 processing, but with different time-courses. The findings highlight the difference between online and offline measures of performance: processing language in real-time reflects mainly automatic activation of morpho-syntactic structures, whereas offline judgments might also involve strategic and meta-linguistic decision making. Together, the findings show that during L3 processing, trilinguals have access to all previously acquired linguistic knowledge, and that the multilingual language system is fully interactive. (shrink)

Teacher emotion, an important aspect of language teacher psychology, has recently drawn growing attention in language teacher development studies. Previous research has shown that language teachers, typically pressured by heavy workloads, may face emotional challenges from multiplied sources, especially in the context of educational changes such as curriculum reform and the COVID-19 emergency. Current literature on teachers’ emotions largely centers around ordinary language teachers, with teacher leaders whose agentic actions often exert greater influence on the effectiveness of educational changes rarely (...) examined. Situated in a top-tier research university that has been promoting an English for Academic Purposes reform to enhance its science students’ multilingual competence in academic contexts, this longitudinal case study tracked the emotional trajectory of an English teacher, Lea, for 5 years. Adopting an ecological perspective, our study confirms that language teachers’ emotions vary across the reform ecosystems and extends the current inquiry by conceptualizing the intricately interrelated teacher emotion, agency, power, and identity as dynamic constructs. This study also reveals how the reform-inflected emotional changes were associated with Lea’s EAP teacher and teacher leader identity construction, with both identities reinforcing each other, which to some extent reconciled Lea’s emotional tensions. Our study bears significant implications for language teachers involved in educational reform, teacher leaders, and school administrators. (shrink)

In order to exchange knowledge, humans need to share a common lexicon of words as well as to access the world models underlying that lexicon. What is a natural process for a human turns out to be an extremely hard task for a machine: computers can’t represent knowledge as effectively as humans do, which hampers, for example, meaning disambiguation and communication. Applied ontologies and NLP have been developed to face these challenges. Integrating ontologies with (possibly multilingual) lexical resources is (...) an essential requirement to make human language understandable by machines, and also to enable interoperability and computability across information systems and, ultimately, in the Web. This book explores recent advances in the integration of ontologies and lexical resources, including questions such as building the required infrastructure (e.g., the Semantic Web) and different formalisms, methods and platforms for eliciting, analyzing and encoding knowledge contents (e.g., multimedia, emotions, events, etc.). The contributors look towards next-generation technologies, shifting the focus from the state of the art to the future of Ontologies and Lexical Resources. This work will be of interest to research scientists, graduate students, and professionals in the fields of knowledge engineering, computational linguistics, and semantic technologies. (shrink)

Sexuality education is fundamental in higher and tertiary education institutions (HTEIs). Evidence suggests that its effective education is through translations into the first language of learners. However, in global and multilingual cultural communities such as HTEIs, the foundations for these translations are still a researchable area. Notably, in HTEIs adolescents, young adults and adults co-exist and therefore, any translations must be toned to balance across these groups. The aim of this study was to establish strategies that could enable sexuality (...) educators to effectively transfer information that is steeped in indigenous language, religious and cultural meaning without precipitating stigma and taboo issues. The study setting was the National University of Science and Technology where a cross section of indigenous cultures, languages and religions co-existed with other global cultures. A University Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) methodology was administered by the researchers using a Delphi research approach to students and staff. Multilingual, multilayered, multireligious, and multicultural nature of the setting presented serious challenges that compromised the prevention of stigma and taboo issues when dealing with sexuality education. We recommend that the strategy to present sexuality education in indigenous languages to the generality of HTEIs population should, in the first instance, involve systematic identification of appropriate interventions that are religious, cultural, and language-specific. Contribution: This research reveals paramount ethical and religious violations that have a potential to precipitate opportunistic sexual relationships that may lead to impediments in capacity building for learners. This research can be utilised by academics on the field of Practical Theology, specifically youth ministry and pastoral care. (shrink)

English has become the first global language of international com- munication during the last decades. It is dominant in many fields as science, technology, transportation, business and tourism and diplomacy. The European Union with law applicable directly on individuals is officially multilingual. English is, however, preferred in internal communication and in communication with national experts. National laws are closely related with particular states. Related discourse is therefore realized mostly in national language. Legal education and research are thus less anglicized (...) than other university education and research. Nevertheless, increasing importance of international and supranational rules for harmonization and coordination, growing demand for comparison, pres- sure to publish in internationally recognized journals, Europe-wide research projects and rising numbers of exchange of students cause widespread resort to English also at schools of law. Unfortunately, English is language of countries with Anglo-American law which differs significantly from continental law existing in most European and other countries. Therefore, it is difficult to find adequate English words for phenomena of civil law and to stabilize their use in international discourse. (shrink)

Why does an argument end up in the final court decision? Was it deliberated or questioned during the oral hearings? Was there something in the hearings that triggered a particular judge to write a dissenting opinion? Despite the availability of the final judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), none of these legal research questions can currently be answered as the ECHR’s multilingual oral hearings are not transcribed, structured, or speaker-attributed. We address this fundamental gap by presenting (...) LaCour!, the first corpus of textual oral arguments of the ECHR, consisting of 154 full hearings (2.1 million tokens from over 267 h of video footage) in English, French, and other court languages, each linked to the corresponding final judgment documents. In addition to the transcribed and partially manually corrected text from the video, we provide sentence-level timestamps and manually annotated role and language labels. We also showcase LaCour! in a set of experiments that explore the interplay between questions and dissenting opinions. Apart from the use cases in legal NLP, we hope that law students or other interested parties will also use LaCour! as a learning resource, as it is freely available in various formats at https://huggingface.co/datasets/TrustHLT/LaCour. (shrink)

The definitive guide to 21st century investigations of multilingual neuroscience provides a comprehensive survey of neurocognitive investigations of multiple-language speakers. Prominent scholar John W. Schwieter offers a unique collection of works from globally recognized researchers in neuroscience, psycholinguistics, neurobiology, psychology, neuroimaging, and others, to provide a multidisciplinary overview of relevant topics. Authoritative coverage of state-of-the-art research provides readers with fundamental knowledge of significant theories and methods, language impairments and disorders, and neural representations, functions, and processes of the multilingual (...) brain.Focusing on up-to-date theoretical and experimental research, this timely handbook explores new directions of study and examines significant findings in the rapidly evolving field of multilingual neuroscience. Discussions on the bilingual advantage debate, recovery and rehabilitation patterns in multilingual aphasia, and the neurocognitive effects of multilingualism throughout the lifespan allow informed investigation of contemporary issues. Presents the first handbook-length examination of the neuroscience and neurolinguistics of multilingualism. Demonstrates how neuroscience and multilingualism intersect several areas of research, such as neurobiology and experimental psychology Includes works from prominent international scholars and researchers to provide global perspective Reflects cutting-edge research and promising areas of future study in the dynamic field of multilingual neuroscience. it is an invaluable resource for researchers and scholars in areas including multilingualism, psycholinguistics, second language acquisition, and cognitive science. This versatile work is also an indispensable addition to the classroom, providing advanced undergraduate and graduate students a thorough overview of the field. (shrink)

Physical education is often selected for applying multilingual initiatives through the use of the content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach. However, it is still unclear whether the introduction of such approach might entail losing Physical Education’s essence and distorting its basic purposes. The aim of this study is to analyse the impact of CLIL on the Physical Education lessons. Given the purpose of this study, a mixed methodological approach based on a sequential exploratory design divided in two different (...) phases is used. We begin with an initial qualitative data collection (phase I) consisting in the analysis of interviews with 12 participants (8 teachers and 4 students). Based on its analysis, two foci are identified: social relationships and physical activity. Then, informed by the results obtained, a quantitative approach is used (phase II), differentiating these two sets of data to deepen on them. On one part, a sociometric questionnaire was applied to analyse the social relationships among CLIL students. On the other part, a quasi-experimental design (n = 49) was implemented using accelerometry to measure the MVPA of the PE sessions. Regarding physical activity, the results show that levels of MVPA are higher in the experimental group (CLIL) than in the control group showing light to the divergent viewpoints of interviewees. However, focusing on social relationships, the sociometric questionnaire results show that there were no statistical significative changes, although some signs of a slight effect on students’ relationships arise depending on their gender. Therefore, more research would be necessary to deepen on how CLIL affects in this regard. (shrink)

This book primarily tries to bring out the analogy between the conceptual and methodological discourses on the theme of the other. The term 'Other' here refers to the oppressed sections of the society. It may be dalits, women, indigenous or ethnic communities. Since we are living in a multicultural and multilingual society, we should share our views with others on a platform where issues of the marginalized people are addressed by different scholars following different methods and techniques. Though there (...) are various policies and plans for the welfare of the downtrodden, hardly any change can be seen at the micro-level structure of the society. There are studies which highlighted the problems and ethos of the downtrodden sections, but a majority of those studies neglected the marginalized groups. Hence, we felt the need to highlight the issues and concerns of these groups in a wider context and started thinking on the theme 'Ethnographic Discourse of the Other: Conceptual and Methodological Issues'. This volume attempts to discuss and theorize the pragmatic concepts and issues related to the marginalized groups in contemporary societies in South Asia. This book is interdisciplinary in nature and will be useful to scholars and students of Anthropology, Sociology, Linguistics, Social Work, Culture Studies, Gender Studies and Philosophy. It is widely applicable to all sections of the oppressed socially, economically, culturally, academically, politically and other wise. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism at universities in North Macedonia. Multilingualism as a concept is related to an individual’s ability to speak three or more languages. Given the educational and cultural globalization, multilingualism is crucial in many countries in the world. North Macedonia is an excellent example of multilingualism where different cultures live together and learn the languages of each other. At Universities across the country, teachers face different challenges while teaching multilingual (...) classes. Linguistic competence in many local languages allows students to learn foreign languages easily and thus raises students’ global awareness and deepens knowledge about their future teaching career. The study analysed data collected from thirty EFL teachers from four different universities, Southeast European University, University of Tetova, Mother Teresa University and International Balkan University in North Macedonia. The research instrument used was the teacher survey which contained five domains: Teachers’ perspective on multilingualism; Students’ language learning knowledge; Language teacher collaboration; Learning materials, and other topics related to L2 learning and teaching. The study results revealed that teachers view multilingualism as a positive asset for the students, and they expressed that they have developed an approach which helps multilinguals to achieve their learning goals. One area which needs improvement is teacher collaboration, as they tend to collaborate regarding materials and textbooks, however, not willing to share their experience on teaching methods/strategies and challenges faced. (shrink)

We write in response to the original article by Rennie and Rudland published in the April 2003 edition of this journal.1 Current and former Dundee Medical School students are concerned at the media misinterpretation of the study and the consequences that this branding of “dishonesty” will have on Dundee Medical School’s reputation and also on individuals embarking on their ….

Postural instability marks a prevalent symptom of Parkinson’s disease. It often manifests in increased body sway, which is commonly assessed by tracking the Center of Pressure. Yet, in terms of postural control, the body’s Center of Mass, and not CoP is what is regulated in a gravitational field. The aim of this study was to explore the effect of early- to mid-stage PD on these measures of postural control in response to unpredictable visual perturbations. We investigated three cohorts: 18 patients (...) with early to mid-stage PD [Hoehn & Yahr stage ; 1.94 ± 0.70]; a group of 15 age-matched controls ; and a group of 12 young healthy adults. Participants stood on a force plate to track their CoP, while the movement of their entire body was recorded with a video-based motion tracking system to monitor their CoM. A moving room paradigm was applied through a head-mounted virtual reality headset. The stimulus consisted of a virtual tunnel that stretched in the anterior-posterior direction which either remained static or moved back and forth in an unpredictable fashion.We found differences in mean sway amplitude and mean velocities of CoP and CoM between the groups under both conditions, with higher MSA of CoP and CoM for PD and higher mean velocities of both variables for PD and ECT when compared with YCT. Visual perturbation increased mean CoP velocity in all groups but did not have effects on mean CoM velocity or MSA. While being significantly lower for the young adults, the net effect of visual perturbation on mean CoP velocity was similar between patients with PD and age-matched controls. There was no effect of the visual perturbation on mean CoM velocity for any of the groups.Our simultaneous assessment of CoP and CoM revealed that postural control is reflected differently in CoM and CoP. As the motion of CoM remained mostly unaffected, all groups successfully counteracted the perturbation and maintained their balance. Higher CoP velocity for PD and ECT revealed increased corrective motion needed to achieve this, which however was similar in both groups. Thus, our results suggest increased effort, expressed in CoP velocity, to be an effect of age rather than disease in earlier stages of PD. (shrink)

I am an M.D/Ph.D. student and work as a research assistant for the director of a division of the school of medicine who is an M.D. He assigned me to research a certain topic and gave me no guidelines or guidance as to how to do it. Nevertheless, I did the research and wrote it up. My supervisor liked the report and said that he thought it was so good that “I would like to offer you the opportunity to publish (...) it and list you as the primary author.” Some bells went off when he so grandly offered to let me author the report for which I had done 100% of research and writing. I consulted some other people in the field and they said that, as long as I was the primary author, it was legitimate for him to list himself as secondary author if he did some editing later. After editing the abstract only, he e-mailed his revisions to me and in a note at the bottom he asked me what I thought of his revised author order. His name was first, mine second, and the name of his girlfriend was third. I was shocked by what seemed to be a case of unethical author attribution and confronted him asking why he changed the order when we had agreed that I was primary author. He said that he had put in several hours of work. (shrink)

Despite the urgency of this issue, AI still struggles to represent social life. This article presents a comprehensive agent-based model that investigates status-power dynamics in groups. Kemper’s sociological status–power theory of social relationships, and a literature review on school children in middle youth, is its basis. The model allows us to investigate causation of the near-ubiquitous phenomenon that females have lower social status on average than males. Possible causes included in the model are children’s dispositional traits (kindness, beauty, and physical (...) power), schoolyard culture (social acceptability of fighting), behavioural strategy (amount of rough-and-tumble play) and the balance between public and dyadic sources of status. An agent-based model of a virtual schoolyard was created in which the children assemble in changing groups and mutually confer status. The status conferred upon a child modifies the status it holds. Rough-and-tumble is modelled as ambiguous: it is intended as a status conferral, but may be perceived as a power move. Running many trials of the model we found that in time, depending on the parameter settings, a gender-based status gap emerged. Rough-and-tumble play had more impact on emergent status differences than did physical power differences. Social acceptability of fighting also strongly moderated the resulting status gap. Placing more weight on dyadic relationship could alleviate status loss. All these model behaviours are in line with empirical findings of child behaviour studies at schools. They have face validity for social status issues in the adult world. We conclude from this that this kind of agent-based model merits use in studying the status–power dynamics of other issues in child behaviour, or indeed in social behaviour in general. (shrink)

More than three centuries after Baruch Spinoza's excommunication from the Jewish community of Amsterdam, his legacy remains contentious. Born in 1632, Spinoza is one of the most important thinkers of the Enlightenment and arguably the paradigm of the secular Jew, having left Orthodoxy without converting to another faith. One of the most provocative critiques of Spinoza comes from an unexpected source, the influential twentieth-century political philosopher, Leo Strauss. Though Strauss was not an Orthodox Jew, in a well-known essay that prefaced (...) his study of Spinoza, he critically examines modern philosophy's challenge to traditional religion. There he argues that while the Enlightenment had failed to decisively refute Orthodoxy, at the same time, Orthodoxy could only claim to believe its core tenets were true but could not claim to know they were true. Strauss leaves the question at an impasse; both the Enlightenment and Orthodoxy rest on axioms that neither side can fully prove or fully refute. Curiously, Strauss never asks Orthodox Jewish thinkers if his approach to defending Judaism against the claims of the Enlightenment is the same as theirs. This volume poses the question to a group of serious Orthodox Jewish thinkers in an attempt to find out if Orthodoxy has a better answer to the questions raised by Strauss than the one Strauss advanced on its behalf. The seventeen essays in this volume use a variety of approaches, drawing on traditional primary Jewish sources like Scripture, Talmud, and Midrash; medieval rationalists like Maimonides; Enlightenment-era Orthodox sources; Jewish mystical writings like Kabbalah and Chasidut; modern philosophical movements including postmodernism and analytic philosophy; and contemporary Jewish Bible interpretation. While the answers differ, what unites these essays is the willingness to take Strauss' question seriously and to provide "inside" answers, that is, answers given by Orthodox Jews. Much of modern thought tries to square the circle of how to live in a world without belief. The better question is whether it is possible to recover authentic religious belief in the modern world. This volume is an Orthodox Jewish attempt to answer that question, one that no serious person can approach with indifference. (shrink)

Business schools are the “nurseries” of the corporate world. This article offers an empirical analysis of the business student ethos on the basis of research conducted at three Dutch universities. A theoretical framework in the tradition of virtue ethics and dubbed “moral ethology” is used to identify the values business schools convey to their students. The central research question is: What types of ethos do Dutch business students have? Forty‐three undergraduate students participated in Q‐methodological research, a mixed (...) qualitative–quantitative small‐sample method. Five different types of ethos were generated: Do‐Good Managers, Market Managers, Searching Managers, Balancing Managers, and Radical Market Managers. Some general characteristics that apply to all the types of ethos were identified, such as the search for efficiency. It is argued that business schools should pay much more attention to the values that are endorsed in both life and business and should help students to address situations in which values are neglected. (shrink)

Everybody who has learned English as a second or foreign language knows that for reaching intermediate levels, English is an easy language regarding grammar and vocabulary; however, when reaching advanced levels, the learners are faced with complex forms of morphology, syntax, and most obviously, they are faced with the difficulties that pronunciation presents. These are mainly the problems that occur with the English students whose native language is other than English. An experienced teacher of non-native speakers of English can (...) easily recognize the causes of mispronunciation, which in most cases are lack of vocabulary, lack of practice, bad teaching experiences, lack of direct contact with the language, and lack of self-confidence. There are quite a lot of words in English, which are often mispronounced. Those who have just started to learn English as a foreign language, students at primary schools, adults using English as a means of communication and as a working tool, such as businessmen, politicians, administrators, doctors, accountants, and those studying English for teaching purposes, even the teachers of English are faced with the problems of proper pronunciation of words in English.The aim of this research is to identify the problems that the students in the Department of English Language and Literature in the Faculty of Languages, Cultures and Communication face with when they deal with pronunciation of lexical words. (shrink)

This study examined differences between university students who were caught and sanctioned for cheating, students admitting to cheating but who were not caught, and students reporting that they had never cheated. Our findings showed that noncheaters are older, have better grade point averages, and have more sophisticated moral and epistemological reasoning skills. Qualitative analyses revealed that denial of responsibility and injury were the most common neutralization techniques and differed between the sanctioned and self-reported cheaters. We discuss the (...) need to examine the extent to which reasoning skills have a causal impact on cheating behaviors. (shrink)

The purpose of this research was to investigate, for the first time, tertiary education students’ ethical judgements in the Republic of Cyprus academic environment. The authors developed and administered a quantitative questionnaire to a sample of 1,000 individuals currently pursuing accredited degrees at two tertiary institutions. Statistical analysis revealed four factors, named violation of school regulations, selfishness, cheating, and computer ethics that describe students’ ethical judgements in the academic environment. The results indicate that students exhibit the lowest (...) tolerance with ethical issues relevant with selfishness and highest with issues relevant with computer ethics. In addition, a number of differences were revealed when the authors investigated the relationship between the four retained factors and variables such as gender, year of study, type of academic discipline, and religion. Finally, reflecting on the research findings, a number of practical recommendations are made mainly to educational institutions that wish to redefine their policies and procedures regarding ethics within their academic environment. (shrink)

Modernization in China is accompanied by some specific features: aging, individualization, the emergence of the nuclear family, and changing filial piety. While young Chinese people are still the main caregivers for older adults, understanding the attitudes of young Chinese people toward aging and living independently in the context of modernization is important because it relates to future elderly care problems in China. By using in-depth interviews and qualitative methods, 45 participants were enrolled in the study, 38 were women and 37 (...) had no siblings. The ages ranged from 17 to 25 years. Results revealed that participants held diverse attitudes about older adults, but the general attitudes were that older adults are lonely, financially disadvantaged, have poor social support, lack hobbies, and care about their children more than themselves. Chinese college students were affected both by traditional filial piety and individualism; however, of the two, they seemed put greater value on independence. Moreover, traditional filial piety is changing in a modern direction, affected by Western ideas of individualism: the status of the senior is diminishing, and living with one’s parents is no longer regarded as a necessary component. Implications concerning age stereotypes, elderly care policies, and strategies are discussed. (shrink)

Background: Uncivil behavior is a serious issue in nursing education around the world, and is frequently faced by instructors and students. There is no study in relation to explain the concept and dimensions of uncivil behavior in nursing education of Iran. Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the perception of nursing educators about student incivility behavior. Methods: This was a qualitative study. Data from 11 semi-structured interviews were analyzed using conventional content analysis. Participants and research context: (...) In all, 11 nursing educators of 5 various nursing schools in Tehran, capital of Iran, participated. Ethical considerations: Organizational approval by the Universities, and informed consent were ensured before conducting the research. The principles of voluntariness, confidentiality, and anonymity were respected during the research process. Results: Three themes were found: disruptive behavior affecting communication climate, disruptive behavior affecting ethical climate, and disruptive behavior affecting learning climate. Discussion and final considerations: The results of this study demonstrated that uncivil behavior affects every ethical, communicational, and learning climate and threaten peace of the instructors, students, and the academic community. With the consideration of mutuality in incivility behaviors, the authors propose to examine students’ perceptions and identify dimensions of uncivil behavior of instructors for formulating strategies to minimize such behaviors in nursing educational society. (shrink)

The ideological and political education situation is constantly developing and changing. In modern globalization, the ideological education of college students has received great attention. The purpose is to strengthen morality and cultivate people as the basic point of a college education. The principles of educational psychology are adopted to integrate IPE into the whole process of college teaching and help students develop healthily for a long time. First, IPE psychology’s concept and subject attribute under educational psychology are expounded. (...) Next, the concept and development of cognitive structure theory are introduced. Moreover, educational constructivist measures are analyzed. Furthermore, the cognitive structure of college students’ self-cognition and IPE is interpreted and analyzed using cognitive psychology. Then, a questionnaire is designed to study the influencing factors of political education strategies in colleges. Finally, the questionnaire is collected to summarize the influencing factors and put forward optimization strategies. The results show that using the principles of educational psychology and cognitive psychology to investigate can accurately understand modern college students’ self-cognitive structure and ideological and political cognitive structure. The opportunity factor greatly impacts the IPE strategy of college students. More than 97% think that it has an impact, of which more than 51% think that it has a great impact and more than 21% think that it is the decisive factor. Challenge factors greatly impact college students’ IPE strategies. More than 97% think they have an impact, of which more than 55% think they have a great impact, and more than 24% think they are decisive factors. It shows that educational psychology is conducive to the progress of political education in colleges and the improvement of college students’ ideological and political levels. This exploration provides a new direction for educational psychology research in ideological and political work. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced higher education institutions to shift their teaching activities from traditional face-to-face to online learning. This brings a great challenge to the creativity training of vocational college students, who not only learn theoretical knowledge but also cultivate technical skills. Therefore, it is very important to explore the influencing factors of online learning on students’ creativity during the epidemic. By relying on the related literature review, an extensive model is developed by integrating the expectation confirmation (...) model, technology task fit model, and the technology acceptance model to illustrate key factors that influence creativity. Based on the proposed model, theory-based hypotheses are tested through structural equation modeling employing empirical data gathered through a survey questionnaire of 229 students from different vocational colleges in China. In addition, to extend the analysis results, this paper performs a comparative analysis based on gender. The findings demonstrate that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness significantly influence knowledge sharing; knowledge sharing significantly affects creativity. However, there is no substantial relationship between perceived usefulness and attitude, and no relationship between attitude and knowledge sharing. Moreover, a multi-group comparison shows that there is a significant gender difference between perceived ease of use and attitude. Based on the findings, theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)