ESL teacher profiles of ICT integration in their classroom practices and assessment activities : a portrait viewed through the lens of some Quebec teachers’ social representations

Abstract : Information and communication technologies (ICTs, henceforth) have become ubiquitous in our society. The plethora of devices competing with the computer, from iPads to the Interactive whiteboard, just to name a few, has provided teachers and students alike with the ability to communicate and access information with unprecedented accessibility and speed. It is only logical that schools reflect these changes given that their purpose is to prepare students for the future. Surprisingly enough, research indicates that ICT integration into teaching activities is still marginal. Many elementary and secondary schoolteachers are not making effective use of ICTs in their teaching activities as well as in their assessment practices. The purpose of the current study is a) to describe Quebec ESL teachers’ profiles of using ICTs in their daily teaching activities; b) to describe teachers’ ICT integration and assessment practices; and c) to describe teachers’ social representations regarding the utility and relevance of ICT use in their daily teaching activities and assessment practices. In order to attain our objectives, we based our theoretical framework, principally, on the social representations (SR, henceforth) theory and we defined most related constructs which were deemed fundamental to the current thesis. We also collected data from 28 ESL elementary and secondary school teachers working in public and private sectors. The interview guide used to that end included a range of items to elicit teachers’ SR in terms of ICT daily use in teaching activities as well as in assessment practices. In addition, we carried out our data analyses from a textual statistics perspective, a particular mode of content analysis, in order to extract the indicators underlying teachers’ representations of the teachers. The findings suggest that although almost all participants use a wide range of ICT tools in their practices, ICT implementation is seemingly not exploited to its fullest potential and, correspondingly, is likely to produce limited effects on students’ learning. Moreover, none of the interviewees claim that they use ICTs in their assessment practices and they still hold to the traditional paper-based assessment (PBA, henceforth) approach of assessing students’ learning. Teachers’ common discourse reveals a gap between the positive standpoint with regards to ICT integration, on the one hand, and the actual uses of instructional technology, on the other. These results are useful for better understanding the way ESL teachers in Quebec currently view their use of ICTs, particularly for evaluation purposes. In fact, they provide a starting place for reconsidering the implementation of ICTs in elementary and secondary schools. They may also be useful to open up avenues for the development of a future research program in this regard.

Ciudad Verde: una mirada desde el reconocimiento social hasta la diferenciación a través de los espacios

La presente monografía se refiere a la vida cotidiana de los residentes del macroproyecto de vivienda de interés social Cuidad Verde en el municipio de Soacha para comprender las formas de reconocimiento que se tejen entre los residentes, transeúntes y visitantes de la ciudadela. Asimismo, analiza los imaginarios espaciales para entender las relaciones sociales entre unos y otros, abordando al macroproyecto no sólo como un lugar físico sino como un espacio que permite reproducir estereotipos sociales, crear mecanismos de distinción, transformar las maneras de apropiación de la vivienda y tejer nociones de progreso a partir del lugar donde se vive.

La protección social de las familias monoparentales en la ciudad de Bogotá 1991 -2015: una realidad más allá de la ley

Con el paso y las transformaciones sociales, políticas y legales que implica una constituyente, en este caso la del 91, que daba nacimiento a la constitución del mismo año, se originó además una transición hacia un Estado social de derecho, pluriétnico y laico, el cual planteaba un discurso de diversidad e inclusión de la diferencia en diferentes aspectos de la vida social. Sin embargo, en el caso de la familia, esta constitución no representó cambios respecto al discurso estructura y funciones en la sociedad, pues perpetuaba el discurso familista, de una única forma legítima de familia: la nuclear patriarcal, implicando una falta de reconocimiento de la diversidad familiar en Colombia y provocando a su vez una afectación en la atención y protección social de las familias no reconocidas en Colombia. Tal es el caso de las familias monoparentales, cuya estructura no se corresponde a este discurso ideal de familia y gracias a su falta de reconocimiento tanto legal como social, la atención y protección social que reciben por parte del Estado, a través de las instituciones públicas de protección familiar, es parcializada a las jefaturas monoparentales femeninas, al igual de estigmatizadas. Pese a esto, desde 2013, ante la actual coyuntura de reivindicaciones sociales que buscan el reconocimiento de la diversidad de la familia en el país, han surgido mecanismos legales por parte de la corte constitucional, así como nuevas políticas de familia tanto a nivel nacional, como local, que están haciendo sus primeros acercamientos a lo que es la diversidad familiar y a cómo incluir y proteger a las familias. A lo largo del contacto con las instituciones públicas de protección familiar, donde se mostraron nuevas alternativas y avances que aunque representativos, aun no son suficientes, persistiendo la invisibilización tanto social como legal y una protección social parcializada de las familias monoparentales.

Valuing landscape identity of local inhabitants through a tourism discourse

Landscape, people and identity Landscape is about the interaction of a place or an area with people, which is reflected in the material interaction of people creating or shaping the landscape as well as in their mental perception, valuation and symbolic meaning of that landscape (Cosgrove 1998). This mutual and dynamic interaction forms the fundamental principle of the concept of landscape identity. Landscape identity has been described in scientific literature as a concept to bridge the physical, social and cultural aspects of landscapes. Also policy documents related with landscape and heritage (for example the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, the European Landscape Convention, the Faro Convention) are mentioning identity and landscape as key concepts. In those examples, landscape identity can refer to either the landscape itself - its features that makes the landscape unique (thus the landscape character), or to the social and personal construction. However, there is an interdependency between those two perspectives that needs to be conceptualised. Landscape identity is therefore defined as the multiple ways and dynamic relation between landscape and people (Loupa Ramos et al 2016).

The effects of sense and the production conditions of the discourse about woman in the newspaper "the mentor of Brazilian women"

More than understanding a speech, we need to decode it to then seek to understand how this discourse was made and what direction effects it produces. The Mentor of the Brazilians from Sao Joao del Rei - our object of study in this article - since its announcement in 1829, it was proposed to be like the newspaper's name itself shows, a Mentor, a newspaper to guide, advise women the inclusion in the political and moral life of the country, but without forgetting the family and their deveres. Para rationale of this study are taken as the essence of the studies Pêcheux and Eni Orlandi, the French Discourse Analysis (DA), trying to understand the speech of the mining journal in their production conditions in the nineteenth century. Understanding that social memory leads to a discursive memory that formulates the speeches already in place, giving rise to the social-historical context of ideological and enunciator statement. In addition, it is necessary to establish the role of the analyst in the process of understanding of the subject matter, because according to Orlandi (2008), the subject has his body tied to the body of the senses; subject and senses has its corporeality, made at the meeting of the materiality of language and history. In this perspective, enunciator and analyst embody the senses three cutouts of the weekly newsletter: a) the ad in the Astro de Minas newspaper talking about the first Mentor of the Brazilians women edition, b) the No. 1 edition and c) No.10 edition of the Mentor of the Brazilians women.

CULTURAL CANNIBALISM: A TURNING POINT IN THE PROPOSITION OF AMBIVALENT POETICS IN THE LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY DISCOURSE

The concept of cultural cannibalism was discussed and re-established by intellectuals from the field of literary and cultural criticism, and it was also the object of creative appropriation by a significant group of writers in Brazil and in the Latin America context. Nevertheless, this concept is revitalized in the contemporary context, reflecting the critical consciousness of the writer on the understanding of social inequalities that shape Latin America, in its different segments, be they political, economic or cultural.

Epistemological and philosophical refluxes in the constitution of the Pecheuxtian Discourse Analysis

This article aims at verifying influences of epistemological and philosophical basis constitutive of the French Discourse Analysis (DA), more specifically that one based on the studies of Michel Pêcheux.  For him, the social class, the socio-historic and cultural interpellation of the subject are determining of meanings and are linked with the Marxist historical materialism, via Althusser, as well as with the lacanian Psychoanalysis and with the saussurian Linguistics. His writings also influences by Michel Foucault, especially during the so-called “third phase” of the DA. Thus, between the two philosophical lines which cross science for centuries, that is, the formalist-logicist and the rationalist-idealism, the Discourse Analysis has a strong connection with this last one.

Advertising to children in Brazilian families: a critical discourse analysis of reception

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of the reception of advertising to children in Brazilian families. The topic of children's advertising has gained importance in recent years because of the civil movements for regulation by-law of advertising to children in Brazil. In view of the various interests at stake, the matter has been the subject of discussion and controversy. Therefore the objective of this paper is to cooperate to the debate, in order to understand the reception of children's advertising in family dynamics. We chose here the focus in the perspective of mothers and fathers. Four semi-structured interviews for the mothers and fathers of children aged between six and 10 years, conducted in two schools in the Distrito Federal, were analyzed. The category ‘appraisal’ was considered for analysis of positions, behaviors and feelings present in the discourse of the parents. The reflections were guided on Critical Discourse Analysis and reveal that advertising to children has been responsible for a determinate disharmony in the family environment, while at the same time strengthen traditional roles of social actors.

Discourse genres, dialogism and hybridism

Based on a(n) (in)transdisciplinary view, we aim at discussing the relationship between utterance and hybridism upon Bakhtin’s Circle perspective (BAKHTIN, 2003[1979]; 1998[1975]; 2008[1963]; BAKHTIN/VOLOCHÍNOV, 2006[1929]; MEDVIÉDEV, 2012[1928]), by objectiving to construct a comprehension concerning the hybrid genres, in special, to this present study, the hybrid genres from the journalism sphere. To do so, we follow an epistemological, theoretical and methodological way in accordance with Bakhtin’s Circle studies and we selected utterances from the talk show discourse genre. We believe that the study is relevant, because it doesn’t only confirm the importance to join dialogues between Applied Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, in terms of ratifying the permeability among the disciplinary boundaries in order to understand the social life (MOITA LOPES, 2006) but also it contributes to sediment plural views about discourse genres in bakhtinian analysis of discourse/utterance.

The denouncement in the social textualization by interweavement of significant materialities

In this paper I analyse the discursive mechanics on a scene of the Brazilian film Ó paí, ó! , directed by Monique Gardenberg and based on Marcio Meirelles's play. As a start I reckon that the film textualises the social aspects parting from the relation between humour and denunciation. This relation mirrors at another one: the one between art and resistence, which is broadcast on the common  sense as well as on the theoretical-political and artistical field. I reckon humour as the expression of both exaggeration and irony that is formulated by the interweavement of images, gestures, sounds and text. The denunciation, however, is viewed as the textualisation of the conflict, once there is an element of denouncement in the play (as well as in the film), since it intends to portrait the situation of the inhabitants of Pelourinho (a historical neighbourhood in Salvador) during the 90's. This was the period when the neighbourhood was under refurbishment, motivated by touristic interests. The analysis is done under the analytical and theoretical premises of the Discourse Analysis, on a materialist perspective. I also use the notions of interdiscourse, resistence and denunciation against the analytical notions of intradiscourse and discursive memory. I believe to be able to show how the visual formulations textualise social aspects, considering the intersection between humour and denunciation as an axis of sustainability of these formulations.

The effect of gender context on children's social behaviour in a limited resources situation : an observational study

Knowing when to compete and when to cooperate to maximize opportunities for equal access to activities and materials in groups is critical to children's social and cognitive development. The present study examined the individual (gender, social competence) and contextual factors (gender context) that may determine why some children are more successful than others. One hundred and fifty-six children (M age=6.5 years) were divided into 39 groups of four and videotaped while engaged in a task that required them to cooperate in order to view cartoons. Children within all groups were unfamiliar to one another. Groups varied in gender composition (all girls, all boys, or mixed-sex) and social competence (high vs. low). Group composition by gender interaction effects were found. Girls were most successful at gaining viewing time in same-sex groups, and least successful in mixed-sex groups. Conversely, boys were least successful in same-sex groups and most successful in mixed-sex groups. Similar results were also found at the group level of analysis; however, the way in which the resources were distributed differed as a function of group type. Same-sex girl groups were inequitable but efficient whereas same-sex boy groups were more equitable than mixed groups but inefficient compared to same-sex girl groups. Social competence did not influence children's behavior. The findings from the present study highlight the effect of gender context on cooperation and competition and the relevance of adopting an unfamiliar peer paradigm when investigating children's social behavior.