Language, Logos, and Social Ontology: Naturalist and Post-Naturalist Narratives of Human Rationality and Social Reality

I distinguish two ways that philosophers have approached and explained the reality and status of human social institutions. I call these approaches “naturalist” and “post-naturalist”. Common to both approaches is an understanding that the status of mind and its relation to the world or “nature” has implications on a conception of the status of institutional reality. Naturalists hold that mind is explicable within a scientific frame that conceives of mind as a fundamentally material process. By proxy, social reality is also materially explicable. Post-naturalists critique this view, holding instead that naturalism is parasitic on contemporary science—it therefore is non-compulsory and distorts how we ought to understand mind and social reality. A comparison of naturalism and post-naturalism will comprise the content of the first chapter. The second chapter turns to tracing out the dimensions of a post-naturalist narrative of mind and social reality. Post-naturalists conceive of mind and its activity of thought as sui generis, and it transpires from this that social institutions are better understood as a rational mind’s mode of the expression in the world. Post-naturalism conceives of social reality as a necessary dimension of thought. Thought requires a second person and thereby a tradition or context of norms that come to both structure its expression and become the products of expression. This is in contrast to the idea that social reality is a production of minds, and thereby derivative. Social reality, self-conscious thought, and thought of the second person are therefore three dimensions of a greater unity.

Proving My Competency One Test at a Time: Internationally Educated Nurses and the Canadian English Language Benchmark Assessment for Nurses

Abstract Professional language assessment is a new concept that has great potential to benefit Internationally Educated Professionals and the communities they serve. This thesis reports on a qualitative study that examined the responses of 16 Canadian English Language Benchmark Assessment for Nurses (CELBAN) test-takers on the topic of their perceptions of the CELBAN test-taking experience in Ontario in the winter of 2015. An Ontario organization involved in registering participants distributed an e-mail through their listserv. Thematic analyses of focus group and interview transcripts identified 7 themes from the data. These themes were used to inform conclusions to the following questions: (1) How do IENs characterize their assessment experience? (2) How do IENs describe the testing constructs measured by the CELBAN? (3) What, if any, potential sources of construct irrelevant variance (CIV) do the test-takers describe based on their assessment experience? (4) Do IENs feel that the CELBAN tasks provide a good reflection of the types of communicative tasks required of a nurse? Overall, participants reported positive experiences with the CELBAN as an assessment of their language skills, and noted some instances in which they felt some factors external to the assessment impacted their demonstration of their knowledge and skill. Lastly, some test-takers noted the challenge of completing the CELBAN where the types of communicative nursing tasks included in the assessment differed from nursing tasks typical of an IENs country or origin. The findings are discussed in relation to literature on high-stakes large-scale assessment and IEPs, and a set of recommendations are offered to future CELBAN administration. These recommendations include (1) the provision of a webpage listing all licensure requirements (2) monitoring of CELBAN location and dates in relation to the wider certification timeline for applicants (3) The provision of additional CELBAN preparatory materials (4) Minor changes to the CELBAN administrative protocols. Given that the CELBAN is a relatively new assessment format and its widespread use for high-stakes decisions (a component of nursing certification and licensure), research validating IEN-test-taker responses to construct representation and construct irrelevant variance is critical to our understanding of the role of competency testing for IENs.

THE EFFECT OF PURPOSEFUL MATHEMATICS DISCOURSE IN THE CLASSROOM ON STUDENTS’ MATHEMATICS LANGUAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF PROBLEM SOLVING

This study examines how one secondary school teacher’s use of purposeful oral mathematics language impacted her students’ language use and overall communication in written solutions while working with word problems in a grade nine academic mathematics class. Mathematics is often described as a distinct language. As with all languages, students must develop a sense for oral language before developing social practices such as listening, respecting others ideas, and writing. Effective writing is often seen by students that have strong oral language skills. Classroom observations, teacher and student interviews, and collected student work served as evidence to demonstrate the nature of both the teacher’s and the students’ use of oral mathematical language in the classroom, as well as the effect the discourse and language use had on students’ individual written solutions while working on word problems. Inductive coding for themes revealed that the teacher’s purposeful use of oral mathematical language had a positive impact on students’ written solutions. The teacher’s development of a mathematical discourse community created a space for the students to explore mathematical language and concepts that facilitated a deeper level of conceptual understanding of the learned material. The teacher’s oral language appeared to transfer into students written work albeit not with the same complexity of use of the teacher’s oral expression of the mathematical register. Students that learn mathematical language and concepts better appear to have a growth mindset, feel they have ownership over their learning, use reorganizational strategies, and help develop a discourse community.