Towards a feminization of agricultural labour in northwest Syria

Smallholdings in the rural areas of northwest Syria are a result of land fragmentation that is due to inheritance. Because of rapid population growth combined with land fragmentation, these smallholdings are increasing and cannot sustain the rural households whose sizes and needs are also increasing rapidly. This situation has led to increasing numbers of mates migrating to urban areas in Syria and to neighbouring countries looking for work opportunities. In addition, recent agricultural intensification trends seem to have led to the emergence of a waged labour force which, in the absence of male workers owing to significant rates of migration, is now predominantly female. Agricultural labour use depends upon household characteristics and resources (type of labour used, gender of labour waged/exchanged/familial). The article attempts to present a comprehensive analysis of household labour use in distinctive farming systems in one region of Syria that has undergone great change in recent decades, and examines the changes in the composition of the agricultural labour force. Secondary information, rapid rural appraisals and formal farm surveys were used to gather information on the households in a study area where different farming systems coexist. The results show that the decrease in landholding size, the resulting male migration, and land intensification have resulted in the expansion of female labour in agricultural production, which has been termed in this research a 'feminization of agricultural labour'. This suggests that agricultural research and extension services will have to work more with women farmers and farm workers, seek their wisdom and involve them in technology and tran, fer This is not easy in conservative societies but requires research and extension institutions to take this reality into consideration in their programmes.

Constituting the teacher of reading in contemporary Australian literacy debates

This chapter documents the history of the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy and the subsequent fate of the figure of the teacher, in terms of how the inquiry has acted to background the teacher and bring new figures into prominence. The classroom teacher is being moved out of a central role of authority in literacy education, in spite of claims about the importance of the teacher in parts of the report. Authority is now being placed in the figure of the scientific researcher who decides what the best techniques are, and develops diagnostic tools that the teacher must use in order to decide which of the techniques to apply. Specialist literacy teachers, well “trained”by these experts, are needed to ensure that teachers do what the experts recommend (evidence-based practice). Thus, the classroom literacy teacher becomes a cipher for applying expertly designed techniques and tests.

The legacy of Ian Hunter's work on literature education and the history of reading practices : some preliminary remarks

Ian Hunter's early work on the history of literature education and the emergence of English as school subject issued a bold challenge to traditional accounts that have in the main focused on English either as knowledge of a particular field or as ideology. The alternative proposal put forward by Hunter and supported by detailed historical analysis is that English exists as a series of historically contingent techniques and practices for shaping the self-managing capacities of children. The challenge for the field is to advance this historical work and to examine possible implications for English teaching.

The value of books : the fantastic flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and the social hieroglyphic of reading

The late eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of new technologies of subjectivity and of the literary. Most obviously, “the novel as a literary form appeared to embody and turn into an object the experience of life itself” (Park), and the novel genre came to both reflect and shape notions of interiority and subjectivity. In this same period, “A shift was taking place in the way people felt and thought about children and the accoutrements of childhood, including books and toys, were implicated in this change” (Lewis). In seeking to understand the relationships between media (e.g. books and toys), genres (e.g. novels and picture books), and modes of subjectivity, Marx’s influential theory of commodity fetishism, whereby “a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things”, has served as a productive tool of analysis. The extent to which Marx’s account of commodity fetishism continues to be of use becomes clear when the corollaries between the late eighteenth-century emergence of novels and pictures books as technologies of subjectivity and the early twenty-first century emergence of e-readers and digital texts as technologies of subjectivity are considered. This paper considers the literary technology of Apple’s iPad (first launched in 2010) as a commodity fetish, and the circulation of “apps” as texts made available by and offered as justifications for, this fetish object. The iPad is both book and toy, but is never “only” either; it is arguably a new technology of subjectivity which incorporates but also destabilises categories of reading and playing such as those made familiar by earlier technologies of literature and the self. The particular focus of this paper is on the multimodal versions (app, film, and picture book) of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which are understood here as a narrativisation of commodity fetishism, subjectivity, and the act of reading itself.

Re-reading the reading lesson : episodes in the history of reading pedagogy

Reading pedagogy is constantly an object of discussion and debate in contemporary policy and practice but is rarely a matter for historical inquiry. This paper reports from a recent study of the history of reading pedagogy in Australia and beyond. It focuses on a recurring figure in the historical record—the ‘reading lesson’. Presented as a distinctive trope, the reading lesson is traced in its regularity in and through the discourse of reading pedagogy, starting in 1930s Australia and moving back into 19th-century Europe, and with specific reference to the UK and the USA. Teaching reading is expressly identified as a moral project—something that, it can be argued, clearly continues into the present.

Wanted--readers in South Carolina. Report of the Committee on promotion of reading of the South Carolina Teachers Association

This publication is a report generated by the South Carolina Teachers Association on the state of South Carolinians' reading habits, including reasons why reading levels are low and suggestions on how to improve the availability of reading materials, education, and motivation to read.

Brain-Based Individual Difference Measures of Reading Skill in Deaf and Hearing Adults

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2015