Negotiating teacher identities : dialogic reflections on classroom interaction in a transnational context

This study investigates the development of teacher identity in a transnational context through an analysis of the voices of sixteen preservice teachers from Hong Kong who engage in interaction with primary students in an Australian classroom. The context for this research is the school-based experience undertaken by these preservice English as a second language teachers as part of their short language immersion (SLIM) program in Brisbane, Australia. Such SLIM programs are a genre of study abroad programs which have been gaining in popularity within teacher education in Australia, attended by preservice and inservice teachers from China, Hong Kong, Korea, and other Asian countries. This research is conducted at a time when the imperative to globalise higher education provision is a strategic factor in the educational policies of both Australia and Hong Kong. In Australia, international educational services now constitute the country’s third largest export with more than 400,000 students coming to Australia to study annually. In order to maintain Australia’s current global position as the third most popular Englishspeaking study destination, the government is now focusing on sustainability and the quality of the study experience being offered to international students (Bradley Review, 2008). In Hong Kong, the government sponsors both preservice and inservice English as a second language (ESL) teachers to undertake SLIM programs in Australia and other English-speaking countries, as part of their policy of promoting high levels of English proficiency in Hong Kong classrooms. Transnational teacher education is an important issue to which this study contributes insights into the affordances and constraints of a school-based experience in the transnational context. Second language teacher education has been defined as interventions designed to develop participants’ professional knowledge. In this study, it is argued that participation in a different community of practice helps to foreground tacit theories of second language pedagogy, making them visible and open to review. Questions of pedagogy are also seen as questions of teacher identity, constituting the way that one is in the classroom. I take up a sociocultural and poststructural framework, drawing on the work of James Gee and Mikhail Bakhtin, to theorise the construction of teacher identity as emerging through dialogic relations and socially situated discursive practices. From this perspective, this study investigates whether these teachers engage with different ways of representing themselves through appropriating, adapting or rejecting Discourses prevailing in the Australian classroom. Research suggests that reflecting on dilemmas encountered as lived experiences can extend professional understandings. In this study, the participants engage in a process of dialogic reflection on their intercultural classroom interactions, examining with their peers and their lecturer/researcher selected moments of dissonance that they have faced in the unfamiliar context of an Australian primary classroom. It is argued that the recursive and multivoiced nature of this process of reflection on practice allows participants opportunities to negotiate new understandings of second language teacher identity. Dialogic learning, based on the theories of Bakhtin and Vygotsky, provides the theoretic framing not only for the process of reflection instantiated in this study, but also features in the analysis of the participants’ second language classroom practices. The research design uses a combined discourse analytic and ethnographic approach as a logic-of-inquiry to explore the dialogic relationships which these second language teachers negotiate with their students and their peers in the transnational context. In this way, through discourse analysis of their classroom talk and reflective dialogues, assisted by the analytic tools of speech genres and discourse formats, I explore the participants’ ways of doing and being second language teachers. Thus, this analysis traces the process of ideological becoming of these beginner teachers as shifts in their understandings of teacher and student identities. This study also demonstrates the potential for a nontraditional stimulated recall interview to provide dialogic scaffolding for beginner teachers to reflect productively on their practice.

Understanding the heterogeneity of entrepreneurship education: going beyond Gartner

This paper seeks to draw attention to the importance of appreciating and using ever-present diversity to achieve increased legitimacy for entrepreneurship education. As such, it aims to draw the reader into a reflective process of discovery as to why entrepreneurship education is important and how such importance can be prolonged. Design/methodology/approach - The paper revisits Gartner's 1985 conceptual framework for understanding the complexity of entrepreneurship. The paper proposes an alternative framework based on the logic of Gartner's framework to advance the understanding of entrepreneurship education. The authors discuss the dimensions of the proposed framework and explain the nature of the dialogic relations contained within. Findings - It is argued that the proposed conceptual framework provides a new way to understand ever-present heterogeneity related to the development and delivery of entrepreneurship education. Practical implications - The paper extends an invitation to the reader to audit their own involvement and proximity to entrepreneurship education. It argues that increased awareness of the value that heterogeneity plays in student learning outcomes and programme branding is directly related to the presence of heterogeneity across the dimensions of the conceptual framework. Originality/value - The paper introduces a simple yet powerlu1 means of understanding what factors contribute to the success or otherwise of developing and delivering entrepreneurship education. The simplicity of the approach suggested provides all entrepreneurship educators with the means to audit all facets of their programme.

A contribuição do estágio supervisionado para a formação reflexiva do pedagogo

This study aims to investigate the contribution of supervised training for training reflective of the students in the service of pedagogy course of the Vocational Training Program for Basic Education - PROFORMAÇÃO Universidade Estadual do Rio Grande do Norte / Campus Avançado Professor João Ismar de Moura - CAJIM Patu City / RN. Based on studies of Schon (2000), Alarcão (2003), Pimenta (1994, 2000), Tardif (2002) Ibiapina (2008) among others have adopted a theoretical framework which have been focusing on studies concerning the formation of the reflective teacher, in perspective also contribute to the professionalization of teachers. The study falls within the qualitative approach of educational research and the methodology chosen has characteristics of a collaborative research. In the process, we used the following instruments: individual and group interview, sitting reflective observation, videoformação, material prescribed personal documents. The relevance of this research is to highlight the contribution of reflexive perspective in the teaching profession for: knowledge of teachers, teacher professional development, relationship between theory and practice, collective work, school and university as a place of training. These findings indicate that: a) the stage for advanced teacher becomes a teacher action research, seeking to (re) signification practices, b) the stage still presents itself as an activity limited to the applicability of the theories, hence the need for dialogic relations between theory and practice in education, requiring their redefinition c) despite experiencing an in-service training, the students still need information to enable them to link theory to practice, but understand its importance, d) a collaborative discussion can be a strategy that encouraged and implemented, is likely to be an alternative to the consolidation of training reflective e) It is important to the collective action of teachers in the school and the university as an opportunity for development of the reflective process f) the students-teachers still do not understand what is reflection and not experiencing it, but realizes the need to change the thinking and way of acting, g) there are conflicts between the teacher's knowledge of the students, teachers and the actions constituting the real, creating contradictions between saying and doing training

Discurso empresarial: o house-organ como instrumento ideológico nas organizações

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Cartas pessoais entre crianças brasileiras, portuguesas e angolanas

This article analyzes the data resultant of the accomplishment, between 2008 and 2009, of an extension and research project on the international exchange of letters between teachers and students from elementary schools in the towns of Garça and Marília, São Paulo State, Brazil, with a school in the city of Azaruja, Portugal and another in the city of Luanda, Angola. It was developed by a team of students and teachers, UNESP, Marília, in order to promote the exchange via personal letters for that students, between 8 and 9 years old, could take possession of the written language, in this case Portuguese, and understand it as an instrument steeped in culture. The choice of this kind in the world of the epistolary genre was made because it promotes the participation of the Other in the configuration of dialogic relations in the elaboration of the statements, taken as a reference in a Bakhtinian conception of language. It aimed to (1) point, in the letters exchanged between teachers and students between the Portuguese, Brazilians and Angolans in the early years, the evidence of authorship linguistic behavior that could signal the beginning of autonomy in the use of the written modality of language, or signs of submissive behavior; (2) reveal the cultural content of language tools used to construct indicators listed on the customs of each people, including those constituting school doings. For the generation of data were used principles of action research, which enabled direct action, along with Brazilian teachers, and indirectly, in the case of the foreign teachers. From the analysis of the corpus of research - letters exchanged between teachers and students - it is clear that the appropriation of language as a speech act realized in human relations makes the old personal correspondence a powerful instrument of development in the area of the written language.

Análise de ofícios sob uma perspectiva bakhtiniana

The objective of this work is to describe the particularities of the official letter genre, according to theoretical perspective of the Russian philosopher of language Bakhtin. The discourse genres, in this perspective, presented in relative stability, being affected by alterations occurred in the activity sphere where they circulate, for the ideological values that produce the speeches of this sphere and for the dialogic relations with other genres and spheres. It is intended to show as the official letter, in the public departments, although the stability acquired for its formal style, objective, reveals in an instability permeated for the thematic aspect, compositional and until stylistic. For realization of this analysis, were select sixty official letters of the public town administration sphere of the city of Araraquara, produced in the months of February, March and April of 2011. The official letters were separate in two groups for subject: repayment; diverse subjects. The methodology uses the dialogic boarding of the discourse used for the circle of Bakhtin

A polêmica sobre os transgênicos: Monsanto vs. MST

Based on a discursive perspective, in this paper we analyze some aspects of the dialogue between the discourse in favor of and the one against transgenics in Brazil, by showing the dialogic relations that each of them engages with other discourses. We noticed that the anti-transgenics discourse, which opposes openly the pro-transgenics trend, has been built upon both the scientific and the leftist political discourses, whereas the pro-transgenics discourse has been constructed upon the scientific discourse and covertly polemicizes with its other.

Modelling the process of dialogic communication in public relations: a role-based approach

This paper takes Kent and Taylor’s (2002) call to develop a dialogic theory of public relations and suggests that a necessary first step is the modelling of the process of dialogic communication in public relations. In order to achieve this, extant literature from a range of fields is reviewed, seeking to develop a definition of dialogic communication that is meaningful to the practice of contemporary public relations. A simple transmission model of communication is used as a starting point. This is synthesised with concepts relating specifically to dialogue, taken here in its broadest sense rather than defined as any one particular outcome. The definition that emerges from this review leads to the conclusion that dialogic communication in public relations involves the interaction of three roles – those of sender, receiver, and responder. These three roles are shown to be adopted at different times by both participants involved in dialogic communication. It is further suggested that variations occur in how these roles are conducted: the sender and receiver roles can be approached in a passive or an active way, while the responder role can be classified as being either resistant or responsive to the information received in dialogic communication. The final modelling of the definition derived provides a framework which can be tested in the field to determine whether variations in the conduct of the roles in dialogic communication actually exist, and if so, whether they can be linked to the different types of outcome from dialogic communication identified previously in the literature.

The art of being together: a social constructionist perspective on dialogic methods in the organizational context

The purpose of this project is to understand, under a social constructionist approach, what are the meanings that external facilitators and organizational members (sponsors) working with dialogic methods place on themselves and their work. Dialogic methods, with the objective of engaging groups in flows of conversations to envisage and co-create their own future, are growing fast within organizations as a means to achieve collective change. Sharing constructionist ideas about the possibility of multiple realities and language as constitutive of such realities, dialogue has turned into a promising way for transformation, especially in a macro context of constant change and increasing complexity, where traditional structures, relationships and forms of work are questioned. Research on the topic has mostly focused on specific methods or applications, with few attempts to study it in a broader sense. Also, despite the fact that dialogic methods work on the assumption that realities are socially constructed, few studies approach the topic from a social constructionist perspective, as a research methodology per se. Thus, while most existing research aims at explaining whether or how particular methods meet particular results, my intention is to explore the meanings sustaining these new forms of organizational practice. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 25 people working with dialogic methods: 11 facilitators and 14 sponsors, from 8 different organizations in Brazil. Firstly, the research findings indicate several contextual elements that seem to sustain the choices for dialogic methods. Within this context, there does not seem to be a clear or specific demand for dialogic methods, but a set of different motivations, objectives and focuses, bringing about several contrasts in the way participants name, describe and explain their experiences with such methods, including tensions on power relations, knowledge creation, identity and communication. Secondly, some central ideas or images were identified within such contrasts, pointing at both directions: dialogic methods as opportunities for the creation of new organizational realities (with images of a ‘door’ or a ‘flow’, for instance, which suggest that dialogic methods may open up the access to other perspectives and the creation of new realities); and dialogic methods as new instrumental mechanisms that seem to reproduce the traditional and non-dialogical forms of work and relationship. The individualistic tradition and its tendency for rational schematism - pointed out by social constructionist scholars as strong traditions in our Western Culture - could be observed in some participants’ accounts with the image of dialogic methods as a ‘gym’, for instance, in which dialogical – and idealized –‘abilities’ could be taught and trained, turning dialogue into a tool, rather than a means for transformation. As a conclusion, I discuss what the implications of such taken-for-granted assumptions may be, and offer some insights into dialogue (and dialogic methods) as ‘the art of being together’.

Tourist Destination Image in the New Technological Environments: Dialogism under the Public Relations Gaze

The dependence and influence of new media on social and organizational life have led to a new orientation of the communicational practices of organizations and to a research paradigm shift to a cocriational model within public relations theory. This model is based on dialogic rhetoric and dialogue that requires a joint production of content and meanings by organizations and publics, which have a central role in shaping image. The new social and communicational paradigms have also an impact on tourism research, implying the need to understand the role of new technologies, particularly websites, in image formation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of website in the formation of a tourist destination image (Portugal) through the understanding of the degree of adoption of dialogical principles on websites by official and unofficial tourist organizations and the identifying of denotative and connotative elements that are represented on published and shared photographs in these websites. The research corpus consisted of websites of entities and photographs published and shared on these websites. The methodology used is quantitative and qualitative, based on content analysis of data of websites and photographs. Results indicate that official tourist entities adopted the dialogic principles in a higher degree than unofficials. There is also a higher adoption of the principles related to technical dimension than dialogical dimension. Results confirm a relation between the adoption of dialogical link and an increased openness by entities to the possibility of photo sharing. The analysis of denotative and connotative elements of photography reflects a similarity in representations of entities and tourists. This study contributes to both theoretical perspectives, because it provides a conceptual scheme of destination image formation online and to a practical perspective, because it also suggests guidelines of dialogical practices to incorporate in websites of tourism entities.