How Zulu-speaking youth with physical and visual disabilities understand love and relationships in constructing their sexual identities.

PubMed

Chappell, Paul

2014-01-01

Popular socio-medical discourses surrounding the sexuality of disabled people have tended to subjugate young people with disabilities as de-gendered and asexual. As a result, very little attention has been given to how young people with disabilities in the African context construct their sexual identities. Based on findings from a participatory research study conducted amongst Zulu-speaking youth with physical and visual disabilities in KwaZulu-Natal, this paper argues that young people with disabilities are similar to other non-disabled youth in the way they construct their sexual identities. Using a post-structural framework, it outlines how the young participants construct discursive truths surrounding disability, culture and gender through their discussions of love and relationships. In this context, it is argued that the sexual identities' of young people with physical and visual disabilities actually emerges within the intersectionality of identity discourses.

Deliberative Teacher Education beyond Boundaries: Discursive Practices for Eliciting Gender Awareness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mooney Simmie, Geraldine; Lang, Manfred

2018-01-01

This study uses boundary crossing in activity theory as one normative framework for opening a deliberative inquiry in new discursive spaces to elicit "gender awareness" in teachers' practices. We illustrate this framework by drawing from data in one European teacher education project. Seven case studies were conducted and data were…

Girly mags and girly jobs: pornography and gendered inequality in forensic practice.

PubMed

Mercer, Dave

2013-02-01

This article presents findings from a discourse analytic study into the constructive nature and textual variations of language in a high-security hospital. It explores how mental health nurses, and men convicted of sexual offences who also have a diagnosis of personality disorder, talked about pornography and sexual crime in the context of forensic provision. Access to sexually-explicit media, in relation to treatment environments for people convicted of sexual offences, has become a cause for professional and political concern in the UK. Data collection and analysis, undertaken concurrently, were informed by a discursive design. Semistructured interviews, as co-constructed accounts with nursing staff and detained patients, were audio-taped and transcribed. Data were coded to identify the discursive repertoires, or collective talk, of respondents. In contrast to empirical inquiry into pornography and sexual violence, methodology shifted attention from measurement to meaning, and situated research in a clinical domain. The findings focus on performative language use, where talk about pornography textured the treatment environment, contributed to an overtly masculine discourse, framed the ward as male space, and promoted gendered inequality. The discussion questions the legitimacy of the therapeutic enterprise. © 2012 The Author; International Journal of Mental Health Nursing © 2012 Australian College of Mental Health Nurses Inc.

Interrupting Gendered Discursive Practices in Classroom Talk About Texts: Easy To Think About, Difficult To Do.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alvermann, Donna E.; Commeyras, Michelle; Young, Josephine P.; Randall, Sally; Hinson, David

1997-01-01

Focuses on university- and school-based teacher researchers attempting to alter or interrupt certain gendered discursive practices that threatened to reproduce some of the same inequities in classroom talk about texts that were noted in the past, but were not challenged. Finds four types of interactions: self-deprecating, discriminatory, and…

Gender and sexual vulnerability of young women in Africa: experiences of young girls in secondary schools in Uganda.

PubMed

Muhanguzi, Florence Kyoheirwe

2011-06-01

Sexuality is part and parcel of students' experiences of schooling manifested in personal friendships, relations and social interaction. These encounters constitute sites within which sexual identities are developed, practiced and actively produced through processes of negotiation. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in 14 selected secondary schools in Central and Western Uganda, the study illuminates gendered sexual vulnerability within patterns of social interaction and young girls gendered experiences and negotiation of their sexuality. The study reveals that through social and discursive practices, students construct complex gendered relations of domination and subordination that position boys and girls differently, often creating gender inequalities and sexual vulnerability for those gendered as girls. Girls' vulnerability is characterised by confusing and traumatic experiences fraught with double standards and silences. Typical of these experiences are complex tensions and contradictions surrounding constructions of sexuality that are predicated upon unequal power and gender relations characterised by homophobia, misogyny, control of female sexuality and sexual abuse and exploitation, all which work against girls' expression of sexuality. Gender sensitive sexuality education is identified as a valuable site of intervention to address such vulnerabilities and promote gender equality and equity in society.

[Gender centrality in the process of identity construction of women involved in drug trafficking].

PubMed

Barcinski, Mariana

2009-01-01

The present article aims to discuss the specificities of crimes perpetrated by women, especially the female participation in drug trafficking in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In addition to that, it intends to distinguish female from male criminality. The study is based on reflections made through interviews conducted with eight women presenting a history of involvement in drug trafficking in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Through a systemic discursive approach(1), the analysis investigates the micro and macro elements involved in the process of the construction of the participants' identity. Results show that women's motivations to enter, remain and drop drug trafficking are in great part determined by gender, which along with color and class shapes the roles performed and the places occupied by men and women in society.

The American Society's Constructed Image of Deaf People as Drawn from Discursive Constructions of Deaf People in Major U.S. Newspaper Articles on Cochlear Implantation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fleischer, Flavia Samella

2011-01-01

This study will explore the constructed image of deaf people in the American society as drawn through analyses of discursive structures in articles on cochlear implantation in major U.S. newspapers published between 2006-2009. To analyze discursive structures of newspaper articles, the approach of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) will be…

Communicating Organizational Change Reactions: Downsizing Survivors' Discursive Constructions of Flexible Identities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aggerholm, Helle Kryger

2014-01-01

The aim of this article is to study employees' discursive construction of disparate survivor responses. The analysis reveals how employees position themselves simultaneously within different types of categories by use of discursive actions. Drawing on various discourses, the actors reject having one solid core of identity and instead signal the…

"'I Don't Care What's under Your Clothes": The Discursive Positioning of Educators Working with Trans and Gender-Nonconforming Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frohard-Dourlent, Hélène

2016-01-01

This paper examines the meanings educators produce about their experiences working with trans and gender-nonconforming students, and the effects of this discursive process. In this paper, I draw on 62 interviews with school staff conducted in British Columbia to examine how educators understand their role in an institutional context (a school)…

Who is the competent physics student? A study of students' positions and social interaction in small-group discussions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Due, Karin

2014-06-01

This article describes a study which explored the social interaction and the reproduction and challenge of gendered discourses in small group discussions in physics. Data for the study consisted of video recordings of eight upper secondary school groups solving physics problems and 15 audiotaped individual interviews with participating students. The analysis was based on gender theory viewing gender both as a process and a discourse. Specifically discursive psychology analysis was used to examine how students position themselves and their peers within discourses of physics and gender. The results of the study reveal how images of physics and of "skilled physics student" were constructed in the context of the interviews. These discourses were reconstructed in the students' discussions and their social interactions within groups. Traditional gendered positions were reconstructed, for example with boys positioned as more competent in physics than girls. These positions were however also resisted and challenged.

College English Learners' Discursive Motivation Construction in China

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gu, Mingyue

2009-01-01

There are abundant studies of second/foreign language learning motivation. However, there appears to be insufficient research into how language learners' discourses mediate the construction of their learning/motivation. This paper investigated the discursive construction of two English language learners' motivation in a comprehensive university in…

Constructions relatives et articulations discursives (Relative Constructions and Discursive Articulations)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henry, Paul

1975-01-01

Contrasts classical grammar, which concerned itself with the causal relationships of thought, universal order, and language, with modern linguistics, which tends to entirely absorb the matter of discourse. (Text is in French.) (Author/MSE)

The Construction of Physics as a Quintessentially Masculine Subject: Young People's Perceptions of Gender Issues in Access to Physics.

PubMed

Francis, Becky; Archer, Louise; Moote, Julie; DeWitt, Jen; MacLeod, Emily; Yeomans, Lucy

2017-01-01

The present article investigates explanations for gendered trends in Physics and Engineering access, reporting findings from a large-scale study funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and drawing primarily on data from interviews with 132 15-16 year-old adolescents and their parents. Survey results in our study and elsewhere show strong gender disparities in anticipated pursuit of Physics after completion of compulsory education. In order to explore the constructions of gender and Physics underlying these trends, we focus on qualitative interview data, applying Foucaultian analysis of discourse to investigate gendered narratives underpinning adolescents' and their parents' articulations. This analysis reveals three key discourses at work on the topic of women's access to Physics: (a) equality of opportunity, (b) continued gender discrimination in and around Physics, and (c) Physics as quintessentially masculine. We additionally identify five distinct narratives supporting the discourse of physics as masculine. These various discourses and narratives are interrogated, and their implications explored. We conclude that it is only by disrupting prevalent constructions of the Physical sciences as a masculine and "hard" domain will we increase the presence of women in the sector. Working with young people to analyse and deconstruct the discursive assumptions made in relation to gender and Physics, as well as further work to increase accessibility and broaden representation in Physics, may be fruitful ways to challenge these longstanding associations between Physics and masculinity.

Sexuality, gendered identities and exclusion: the deployment of proper (hetero)sexuality within an HIV-prevention text from South Africa.

PubMed

Gacoin, Andrée

2010-05-01

HIV prevention discourses concern lives, the protection of bodily rights and people's active involvement in the policies and programmes that affect them. HIV prevention discourses also create lives, relying upon the deployment of normative sexual identities at the same time as they invite complex and fluid youth identities to embody the norms of prevention. This paper examines a particular HIV prevention text that is available to teachers in the Western Cape province of South Africa to support the implementation of the national Life Orientation programme. Rather than considering this text as a neutral 'scaffold' upon which teachers and students add cultural meanings, it is important to interrogate the ways in which texts rely upon and reiterate particular discursive constructions of the youth sexual subject. This paper argues that the text deploys a particular discursive framework in order to construct a 'normal' (and hetero) sexuality that validates, rather than questions, social constructions of masculine privilege within heterosexuality. This is achieved through the deployment of a scientific expertise of sexuality; the mobilisation of a valued hetero/homosexual binary to create a 'safe' heterosexuality; the normalisation of bourgeois sexuality through the ideology of marriage; and the naturalisation of heterosexual masculine and feminine identities.

Discursive constructions of youth cancer: findings from creative methods research with healthy young people.

PubMed

Mooney-Somers, Julie; Lewis, Peter; Kerridge, Ian

2016-06-01

As part of work to understand the experiences of young people who had cancer, we were keen to examine the perspectives of peers who share their social worlds. Our study aimed to examine how cancer in young people, young people with cancer and young cancer survivors are represented through language, metaphor and performance. We generated data using creative activities and focus group discussions with three high school drama classes and used Foucauldian discourse analysis to identify the discursive constructions of youth cancer. Our analysis identified two prevailing discursive constructions: youth cancer as an inevitable decline towards death and as overwhelming personhood by reducing the young person with cancer to 'cancer victim'. If we are to understand life after cancer treatment and how to support young people who have been treated for cancer, we need a sophisticated understanding of the social contexts they return to. Discourses shape the way young people talk and think about youth cancer; cancer as an inevitable decline towards death and as overwhelming personhood is a key discursive construction that young people draw on when a friend discloses cancer. The way cancer is constructed shapes how friends react to and relate to a young person with cancer. These constructions are likely to shape challenging social dynamics, such as bullying, that many young cancer survivors experience. Awareness of these discursive constructions can better equip young cancer survivors, their family and health professionals negotiate life after cancer.

New Sexism in Couple Therapy: A Discursive Analysis.

PubMed

Sutherland, Olga; LaMarre, Andrea; Rice, Carla; Hardt, Laura; Le Couteur, Amanda

2017-09-01

The persistence of gender inequality in postindustrial societies is puzzling in light of a plethora of changes that destabilize it, including shifts in economy, legislation, and the proliferation of feminist politics. In family relations, such persistence manifests as a disconnect between couples aspiring to be more egalitarian yet continuing to enact traditional gender roles and hierarchies. There is an emerging consensus that gender inequality persists because of people's continued reliance on sexist ideology or gendered assumptions that constitute women as innately distinct from and inferior to men. Sexist ideology changes its form to accommodate to changing socio-economic conditions. Contemporary forms of sexism are old ways of legitimizing male power articulated in new and creative ways, often by incorporating feminist arguments. To effectively recognize and address "new sexism," scholars and practitioners require new, innovative research frameworks. Our objective in writing this article is two-fold. First, we seek to advance discursive (i.e., focused on language in use) approaches to the study of sexism. Second, we present the results of a discursive analysis of "new" sexist discourse in the context of couple therapy. The study provides preliminary evidence that, despite endorsing egalitarian norms, couples studied continue to rely on gender binaries and remain entrenched in old-fashioned patterns of gender inequality. Implications of these results for the practice of couple therapy and for future research are discussed. © 2017 Family Process Institute.

Stratification of Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development in Australia: An Analysis of Positions Vacant Advertisements

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hardy, Joy

2008-01-01

Positions vacant advertisements discursively construct employment sectors, employers and employees. This paper uses content analysis, systemic functional linguistics and critical discourse analysis to investigate the discursive construction of environmental education and education for sustainable development through positions vacant advertisements…

A Discursive Construction of Homosexual Males in a Muslim-Dominant Community

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shamsudin, Zainon; Ghazali, Kamila

2011-01-01

This paper addresses the issue of identity construction of four young Malay homosexual men in Malaysia. Through narrative discourse of their lifeworlds (Habermas, Theory of communicative action, Polity Press, 1987), this study explores the participants' linguistic repertoire and discursive strategies in the formation, negotiation and establishment…

Scientific literacy and discursive identity: A theoretical framework for understanding science learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brown, Bryan A.; Reveles, John M.; Kelly, Gregory J.

2005-09-01

In this paper we propose the construct of discursive identity as a way to examine student discourse. We drew from the work of Gee (2001, Review of Research in Education, 25, 99-125) and Nasir and Saxe (2003, Educational Researcher, 32(5), 14-18) to consider the multiple contexts and developmental timescales of student discursive identity development. We argue that theories of scientific literacy need to consider the sociocultural contexts of language use in order to examine fully affiliation and alienation associated with appropriation of scientific discourse. As an illustrative case, we apply discursive identity to series of short exchanges in a fifth-grade classroom of African-American students. The discussion examines potential co-construction of student identity and scientific literacy.

Theorising sexual media and sexual violence in a forensic setting: men's talk about pornography and offending.

PubMed

Mercer, Dave; Perkins, Liz

2014-01-01

This article reports findings from a discourse analytic study which critically explored the language of mental health nurses, and detained sexual offenders, in relation to pornography in one high-security hospital. It recognised previous empirical investigation, and pro-feminist theorising, into mediated representations and male sexual violence, but situated the research process in a forensic nursing context. Decision-making about access to, or restriction of, commercial sexual literature, as a component of therapeutic intervention and offender management, reveals tensions between service-user rights and treatment goals. The aim was to access nurse and patient talk in a specific culture. Semi-structured interviews with eighteen nursing staff, and nine patients, were used to co-construct accounts of pornography, sexual offending, and treatment. Analysis and data collection were undertaken concurrently. Interviews were audio-taped and transcribed. Data was coded to identify theoretical/conceptual themes and sub-themes representing discursive repertoires. Attention was given to how textual variation positioned respondents in relation to each other and the institution. Findings suggested collective male talk textured the environment, promoted gendered inequality, marginalised female nurses, and undermined rehabilitation. Shared discourse enabled male staff and patients to relate to each other as men, while maintaining distance through constructions of otherness. Discussion focuses on discriminatory discursive-practices, where men's talk about pornography and sexual violence embodied gendered knowledge/experience and contributed to a toxic culture. Consideration is given to ways of resisting institutional impediments and promoting positive therapeutic relations. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Discursive Hierarchical Patterning in Economics Cases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lung, Jane

2011-01-01

This paper attempts to apply Lung's (2008) model of the discursive hierarchical patterning of cases to a closer and more specific study of Economics cases and proposes a model of the distinct discursive hierarchical patterning of the same. It examines a corpus of 150 Economics cases with a view to uncovering the patterns of discourse construction.…

Writer Identity Construction in Mexican Students of Applied Linguistics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mora, Alberto

2017-01-01

The paper examines the connection between discursive and non-discursive features and the construction of writer identity. In particular, the paper compares and contrasts the writer identity development of two groups of undergraduate students of applied linguistics in the Mexican context, one made up of locally educated ones and the other composed…

Ethnic Minority Students from South Asia in Hong Kong: Language Ideologies and Discursive Identity Construction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gu, Mingyue Michelle; Mak, Barley; Qu, Xiaoyuan

2017-01-01

This article explores how ethnic minority students in Hong Kong secondary schools discursively construct their identities in relation to culture, heritage, and social discourse. It finds that the ethnic minority students negotiate their identities within multiple positioning from parents, school, and the broader social discourse on minority…

Discursive Construction of Social Presence and Identity Positions in an International Bilingual Collaboration

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walker, Ute

2017-01-01

This article examines the discursive construction of social presence and identity in a bilingual collaboration between tertiary distance learners of German in New Zealand and Academic English students in Germany. Drawing on positioning theory, this small-scale study investigated the collaborative practices of a group of students, whose synchronous…

"Being Healthy": The Discursive Construction of Health in New Zealand Children's Responses to the National Education Monitoring Project

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wright, Jan; Burrows, Lisette

2004-01-01

In this paper we examine the discursive resources that year 4 and year 8 students draw on to construct meanings for health. Drawing on students' responses to tasks in the New Zealand National Monitoring Project (Crooks & Flockton, "Health & Physical Education", University of Otago Educational Assessment Research Unit, 1999) we…

"It's Actually Very Normal That I'm Different". How Physically Disabled Youth Discursively Construct and Position Their Body/Self

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van Amsterdam, Noortje; Knoppers, Annelies; Jongmans, Marian

2015-01-01

In this paper, we explore how physically disabled youth who participate in mainstream education discursively construct and position themselves in relation to dominant discourses about sport and physicality that mark their bodies as "abnormal" and "deviant". We employ a feminist poststructuralist perspective to analyze the…

Cyber-Communic@tion Etiquette: The Interplay between Social Distance, Gender and Discursive Features of Student-Faculty Email Interactions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boshrabadi, Abbas Mehrabi; Sarabi, Sepideh Bataghva

2016-01-01

Purpose: Research has shown that the discursive patterns students use in their email interactions with their teachers are not linguistically and socio-culturally appropriate. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to try to explore how socio-cultural conventions influence the Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' choices of…

Scientific Literacy and Discursive Identity: A Theoretical Framework for Understanding Science Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Bryan A.; Reveles, John M.; Kelly, Gregory J.

2005-01-01

In this paper we propose the construct of discursive identity as a way to examine student discourse. We drew from the work of Gee (2001, Review of Research in Education, 25, 99-125) and Nasir and Saxe (2003, Educational Researcher, 32(5), 14-18) to consider the multiple contexts and developmental timescales of student discursive identity…

A Reconstruction of the Gender Agenda: The Contradictory Gender Dimensions in New Labour's Educational and Economic Policy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arnot, Madeleine; Miles, Philip

2005-01-01

This article reviews current interpretations of Labour's education policy in relation to gender. Such interpretations see the marginalisation of gender equality in mainstream educational policy as a result of the discursive shift from egalitarianism to that of performativity. Performativity in the school context is shown to have contradictory…

Sarah was a butch: sexual identity, gender practices, and Sarah's place as mother in the Jewish National Pantheon.

PubMed

Kalev, Henriette Dahan

2012-01-01

Three fields of discourse regarding a masculine-like woman connect at a point that the queer field calls intersex, medical practice calls a sexual disorder, and rabbinic literature terms aylonit. The queer discursive field focuses on the freedom to choose an identity, but not the freedom from choosing one. The medical field focuses on sexual practice as the source of determining "normal" sexuality. In the discursive field of Jewish law there are no demands, because the Halakhic authority determines gender identity on behalf of the individual, maintaining ambiguity. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Discursive Silences: Using Critical Linguistic and Qualitative Analysis to Explore the Continued Absence of Pleasure in Sex and Relationships Education in England

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sundaram, Vanita; Sauntson, Helen

2016-01-01

In this paper, we present an analysis of "pleasure" in sex and relationships education (SRE) in England. Drawing together two distinct sources of data and different but complementary analytical frameworks, we argue that pleasure is largely absent within SRE and that this discursive silence serves to produce highly gendered and…

Reading Gender: A Feminist, Queer Approach to Children's Literature and Children's Discursive Agency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Earles, Jennifer

2017-01-01

Children's literature helps young people make sense of gender. However, while books offer children the imaginative ability to create their own worlds, normative gender can manifest in characters and stories. The study described in this article draws upon "disruptive" storytimes with 114 preschool children, interviews with 20 parents and…

The discursive self-construction of suicidal help seekers in computer-mediated discourse.

PubMed

Kupferberg, Irit; Gilat, Izhak

2012-01-01

The study focuses on the discursive self-construction of suicidal help seekers in an open computer-mediated forum for mental help. Our theoretical framework is inspired by a functionalist approach to discourse, which emphasizes that language resources are self-displaying. It also espouses discursive psychology, which prioritizes the study of psychological and social phenomena in discursive processes. In addition, we adopt the Four World Approach to the analysis of positioning. Qualitative and quantitative analyses show that the density of 'irrealis' (i.e. negation, future and wishes) units and figurative forms was significantly higher in the suicidal messages compared with the messages of other troubled selves, who produced more 'realis' units (i.e. specific and generic stories) and information questions. We interpret these findings as showing that in their attempt to conceptualize conflict and pain, suicidal help-seekers shied away from the narration of past experience and focused instead on the construction of death. The other troubled help seekers used realis units and questions in order to describe their experience to guarantee that help would be provided.

'My sexual self, I stifled it': sexual subjectivities among young Portuguese women.

PubMed

Costa, Cecía; Nogueira, Conceição; López, Félix

2009-05-01

Recent research has examined young women's sexual subjectivities and desires, yet has neglected the ways women in their twenties account for their sexual selves. The present study focuses on the discourses and discursive constructions available for young Portuguese women when talking about their sexual subjectivity. Data were collected through six focus group discussions with young Portuguese women. The goal was to analyse discursive constructions and their potential implications for sexual empowerment and resistance. In the course of the work, it was possible to identify several different discursive devices, the most pervasive of which were Pandora's Box, Protocol and Process. Each of these constructions tended to be negative or contain negative judgements about women's sexuality. Even in contexts where a positive discourse on women's sexual desires emerged, significant constraints were encountered in achieving of a fulfilling and positive sexual experience.

Precarious beginnings: Gendered risk discourses in psychiatric research literature about postpartum depression.

PubMed

Godderis, Rebecca

2010-09-01

The transition to motherhood in western society is particularly informed by risk-based scientific and medical discourses and, as a result, women are especially subject to rationalities and practices that are employed in the name of risk. The aim of this article is to examine the gendered risk discourses that are embedded in one aspect of medicalized mothering - the postpartum period. This article interrogates three key elements of the discursive construction of postpartum depression (PPD) in contemporary psychiatric research literature (approximately 1980-2007). Specifically, I examine how risk-based reasoning is incorporated into the concepts of the postpartum triad and the high-risk mother, and how arguments about why PPD is a 'significant social problem' create a tension between the rights of the mother and those of the child. By placing women in a position to manage certain types of risks related to the postpartum period, these discourses serve to responsibilize women and structure their subjectivities in gendered ways.This analysis contributes to a growing literature that investigates how assumptions about gender, race, class and sexuality are produced and re-produced through the notion of risk.

'I don't view myself as a woman politician, I view myself as a politician who's a woman': The discursive management of gender identity in political leadership.

PubMed

Sorrentino, Jasmin; Augoustinos, Martha

2016-09-01

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard's speech in the Australian parliament on sexism and misogyny received considerable public attention and controversy. However, less attention has been paid to how Gillard attended and oriented to issues related to her status as a woman during the period between her elevation to the position of Prime Minister in June 2010 and the delivery of the misogyny speech in October 2012. Using a discursive psychological approach, this article examines a corpus of interview transcripts in which gender was occasioned both explicitly and implicitly by speakers, thus requiring Gillard to attend to her gender identity. The analysis demonstrates that far from making gender a salient and relevant membership category, Gillard worked strategically to mitigate her gender as merely inconsequential to her role as Prime Minister. These findings are discussed in relation to existing research examining how gender is oriented to, negotiated, and resisted in talk to accomplish social actions, and more specifically what may be at stake for women in leadership positions who explicitly orient to gender as an identity category. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

Challenging Gender Inequalities in Education and in Working Life--A Mission Possible?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brunila, Kristiina; Ylöstalo, Hanna

2015-01-01

This article deals with challenging the gender inequalities that exist in education and working life. It contemplates the kinds of discursive power relations that have led to gender equality work in Finland. In today's conditions where equality issues are being harnessed more strongly to serve the aims of economic efficiency and productivity, it…

Narrating sexual identities in Kenya: "Choice," value, and visibility.

PubMed

Zingsheim, Jason; Goltz, Dustin Bradley; Murphy, Alexandra G; Mastin, Teresa

2017-04-03

This article examines the discursive construction of female same-sex sexual identities in Nairobi. We identify the discursive forces of "choice," devaluation, and invisibility as influential within Kenyan media representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex citizens. Using creative focus groups and participant observation, we demonstrate how same-sex attracted women in Nairobi resist and rearticulate these discursive forces to assert their identity and agency as individuals and as a queer community.

Girls' Education: The Power of Policy Discourse

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Monkman, Karen; Hoffman, Lisa

2013-01-01

Girls' education has been a focus of international development policy for several decades. The discursive framing of international organizations' policy initiatives relating to girls' education, however, limits the potential for discussing complex gender issues that affect the possibilities for gender equity. Because discourse shapes our…

Men's discourses of help-seeking in the context of depression.

PubMed

Johnson, Joy L; Oliffe, John L; Kelly, Mary T; Galdas, Paul; Ogrodniczuk, John S

2012-03-01

Depression is an illness increasingly constructed as a gendered mood disorder and consequently diagnosed in women more than men. The diagnostic criteria used for its assessment often perpetrate and reproduce gender stereotypes. The stigma associated with mental illness and the gendered elements of depression suggest there are likely numerous discourses that position, explain, and justify help-seeking practices. This qualitative study explored men's discourses of seeking help for depression. The methodological approach was informed by a social constructionist perspective of language, discourse and gender that drew on methods from discourse analysis. We conducted individual in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 38 men with depression, either formally diagnosed or self reported. The analysis revealed five discursive frames that influenced the men's talk about help-seeking and depression: manly self-reliance; treatment-seeking as responsible independent action; guarded vulnerability; desperation; and genuine connection. The findings are discussed within a broader context of social discourses of gender, the limitations of current help-seeking literature and the evidence for how men seek help in ways that extend traditional notions of medical treatment. © 2011 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2011 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Traversing New Theoretical Frames for Intercultural Education: Gender, Intersectionality, Performativity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gregoriou, Zelia

2013-01-01

This paper attempts to renegotiate the conceptual and political borders of intercultural education by importing ways of thinking, concepts, aporias and questions relevant to a gendered study of intercultural interactions from theoretical terrains outside the disciplinary borders and discursive limits of intercultural education. A number of…

Troubling Intra-Actions: Gender, Neo-Liberalism and Research in the Global Academy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morley, Louise

2016-01-01

This article raises questions about gender in the neo-liberalised research economy. Theoretically, it includes Barad's concept of intra-action to analyse how discursive-material differences between research winners and losers are created and sustained. Empirically, it draws on international research conducted at British Council seminars on…

Women in physics? Identity and discourse in Taiwan

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tsai, Li-Ling

This dissertation argues that the deeply held hope for gender equity in science can no longer be simply realized as a project to increase women's participation in science. Understanding women's vexed relations with science requires a reconceptualization of the terms women and science, not as given categories to signal how "women" are coping with their disadvantaged positions in "science," but rather as two discourses formed in relation to each other, in institutional practices and in particular social and historical contexts. This dissertation investigates discourses of women and science by focusing on women in physics in Taiwan. This focus extends debates about gender and science by showing that the intervention of a particular discourse---in this case, the discourse of "women in physics"---into an existing discursive field exposed the contested terrain of the gender politics of physics and the identity politics of women physicists in Taiwan. "Women in physics" emerged as an internationally legitimate subject position in Taiwan in 1999 following a call to form a local working team on women in physics. The participants I interviewed utilized this internationally legitimate subject position to reconstruct, in different ways, their gendered identities in physics. Scholarship in the field of gender and science education studies has, over the past three decades, focused on equity and inclusion to address gender inequalities in science. This dissertation suggests, by contrast, that a focus on identity is necessary for understanding gendered career decisions in science. The term identity refers to how individuals perceive themselves and how others respond to their claims; identity involves the purposes, interests and contexts of particular naming processes. In the structural inequalities of gender and science, a focus on identity aims to track individual and collective forms of agency exercised in changing discursive fields. This dissertation concludes by viewing curriculum as a discursive field where various discourses provide subject positions and produce potential meanings through teaching and learning. Hope for social transformation can be situated in the interventionary power of new discourses and the subsequent reconfiguration of gendered identities in existing institutional practices.

Discursive Constructions of Literacies: Shifting Sands in Aotearoa New Zealand

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sandretto, Susan; Tilson, Jane

2017-01-01

Literacy policy and pedagogy in Aotearoa New Zealand have a strong discursive heritage of traditional literacies, which emphasise code breaking and meaning making with linguistic codes and conventions over other possible modes of communication. In a rapidly evolving landscape where changes in communication technologies give birth to new literacies…

Neoliberalism and the World Bank: Economic Discourse and the (Re)Production of Gendered Identity(ies)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Griffin, Penny

2007-01-01

This article examines the World Bank's discourse of neoliberalism with a view to understanding how this informs and sustains the Bank's policies and practices in particularly gendered ways. "Neoliberalism" is, here, a discursive structure that constitutes a powerful and pervasive contemporary model of economic development, resting on assumptions…

Gender and Sexuality: The Discursive Limits of "Equality" in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morrish, Liz; Sauntson, Helen

2010-01-01

This special issue sets out to investigate a number of areas of concern, regarding gender and sexuality, which are identifiable in the current British higher education environment. We argue that current dominant "neoliberal" discourses, which emphasise the commodification of higher education in the U.K., function to set limits upon…

Gender Enactments in Immigrants' Discursive Practices: Bringing Bakht into the Dialogue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vitanova, Gergana

2004-01-01

Drawing on the narratives of four East European couples, this article offers a discourse-centered analysis of their gendered experiences in the second language (L2). The analysis of the data integrates critical feminist perspectives with a Bakhtinian lens to language and the self. Espousing Bakhtin's concepts of dialogue, answerability, and…

Changing and/or Reinscribing Gendered Discourses of Team Leadership in Education?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Court, Marian

2007-01-01

In this article, prevailing professional, business and managerial discourses of team leadership are "troubled" by some feminist critiques and analyses of collectivity and gendered discursive relations of power. I draw on a study of primary school co-principalships to describe and reflect on Karen's (a pseudonym) accounts of her personal and shared…

Whose Literacy? Discursive Constructions of Life and Objectivity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fendler, Lynn; Tuckey, Steven F.

2006-01-01

Drawing from literature in the social studies of science, this paper historicizes two pivotal concepts in science literacy: the definition of life and the assumption of objectivity. In this paper we suggest that an understanding of the historical, discursive production of scientific knowledge affects the meaning of scientific literacy in at least…

Process and Post-Process: A Discursive History.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Matsuda, Paul Kei

2003-01-01

Examines the history of process and post-process in composition studies, focusing on ways in which terms, such as "current-traditional rhetoric,""process," and "post-process" have contributed to the discursive construction of reality. Argues that use of the term post-process in the context of second language writing needs to be guided by a…

Humor-ing the Local: Multivocal Performance in Stand-Up Comedy in Hawai'i

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Furukawa, Toshiaki

2011-01-01

This dissertation takes a discursive approach to Hawai'i stand-up comedy, which is a highly dramaturgical genre, and it examines the cultural specificity of Hawaii comedy in an explicitly interactional context. This culturally-specific performative genre is a discursive site where comedians and their audiences jointly construct multivocal humor…

Gender, Dialogue and Discursive Psychology: A Pilot Sexuality Intervention with South African High-School Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jearey-Graham, Nicola; Macleod, Catriona Ida

2017-01-01

Good-quality sexuality education can be effective in reducing sexual health risks, but may also be disconnected from the lived realities of learners' lives and reinforce gendered stereotypes. In line with the trend towards "empowerment" in and through sexuality education, we implemented a pilot sexuality intervention with Grade 10…

Spinning New Tales from Traditional Texts: Donna Jo Napoli and the Rewriting of Fairy Tale.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crew, Hilary S.

2002-01-01

Demonstrates how Donna Jo Napoli changes generic conventions and reworks discursive formations in order to retell tradition tales. Discusses the narrative strategies she uses in telling her stories, her representation of male and female characters in regard to gender and gendered relationships, and the way she renegotiates ideologies and value…

Acting discursively: the development of UK organic food and farming policy networks.

PubMed

TOMLINSON, Isobel Jane

2010-01-01

This paper documents the early evolution of UK organic food and farming policy networks and locates this empirical focus in a theoretical context concerned with understanding the contemporary policy-making process. While policy networks have emerged as a widely acknowledged empirical manifestation of governance, debate continues as to the concept's explanatory utility and usefulness in situations of network and policy transformation since, historically, policy networks have been applied to "static" circumstances. Recognizing this criticism, and in drawing on an interpretivist perspective, this paper sees policy networks as enacted by individual actors whose beliefs and actions construct the nature of the network. It seeks to make links between the characteristics of the policy network and the policy outcomes through the identification of discursively constructed "storylines" that form a tool for consensus building in networks. This study analyses the functioning of the organic policy networks through the discursive actions of policy-network actors.

Feedback informed treatment: evidence-based practice meets social construction.

PubMed

Tilsen, Julie; McNamee, Sheila

2015-03-01

This article explores the challenges presented by the mandate for evidence-based practice for family therapists who identify with the philosophical stance of social construction. The history of psychotherapy outcome research is reviewed, as are current findings that provide empirical evidence for an engaged, dialogic practice. The authors suggest that the binary between empiricism and social construction may be unhinged by understanding empiricism as a particular discursive frame (i.e., a particular way of talking, acting, and being in the world), one of many available as a way of understanding and talking about our work. Through a case vignette, the authors introduce the evidence-based practice of Feedback Informed Treatment as an elaboration of social construction, and as an example of bridging the gap between the discursive frames of empiricism and social construction. © 2014 Family Process Institute.

Enactments of Discursive Empowerment in Narratives of Medium of Education by North Indian Women

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sandhu, Priti

2010-01-01

In this study I examine how women in a north Indian city narratively construct their identities in relation to medium of education (MoE)--English only (EME), Hindi only (HME), and a combination of both. I specifically analyze how the participants discursively articulate empowerment or disempowerment while narrating stories connected to their MoEs.…

Preservice Elementary Teachers' Use of a Discursive Model of Meaning Making in the Co-Construction of Science Understanding

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boyer, Elisebeth C.

2012-01-01

This research investigates how three preservice elementary teachers were prepared to teach science using a Discursive Model of Meaning Making. The research is divided into two parts. The first consists of the nature of the participants' learning experiences in a science methods course within a school-university Professional Development School…

"Us" and "Them": The Discursive Construction of "the Other" in Greenmarket Square, Cape Town

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dyers, Charlyn; Wankah, Foncha John

2012-01-01

This paper is based on research done on intercultural communication at Greenmarket Square in the heart of Cape Town, South Africa. The Square is well known as a market for informal traders (mainly from other parts of Africa), local people and tourists from all over the world. Using originally collected discursive evidence from market traders, the…

Men's experiences of sexuality after cancer: a material discursive intra-psychic approach.

PubMed

Gilbert, Emilee; Ussher, Jane M; Perz, Janette; Wong, W K Tim; Hobbs, Kim; Mason, Catherine

2013-01-01

Men can experience significant changes to their sexuality following the onset of cancer. However, research on men's sexuality post-cancer has focused almost exclusively on those with prostate and testicular cancer, despite evidence that the diagnosis and treatment for most cancers can impact on men's sexuality. This Australian qualitative study explores the experiences of changes to sexuality for 21 men across a range of cancer types and stages, sexual orientations and relationship contexts. Semi-structured interviews were analysed with theoretical thematic analysis guided by a material discursive intra-psychic approach, recognising the materiality of sexual changes, men's intrapsychic experience of such changes within a relational context and the influence of the discursive construction of masculine sexuality. Material changes included erectile difficulty, decreased desire, and difficulty with orgasm. The use of medical aids to minimise the impact of erectile difficulties was shaped by discursive constructions of 'normal' masculine sexuality. The majority of men reported accepting the changes to their sexuality post-cancer and normalised them as part of the natural ageing process. Men's relationship status and context played a key role managing the changes to their sexuality. We conclude by discussing the implications for clinical practice.

Social work and gender: An argument for practical accounts

PubMed Central

2015-01-01

This article contributes to the debate on gender and social work by examining dominant approaches within the field. Anti-discriminatory, woman-centered and intersectional accounts are critiqued for reliance upon both reification and isolation of gender. Via examination of poststructural, queer and trans theories within social work, the author then presents accounts based upon structural/materialist, ethnomethodological and discursive theories, in order to open up debates about conceptualization of gender. These are used to suggest that social work should adopt a focus on gender as a practical accomplishment that occurs within various settings or contexts. PMID:26273228

Towards Legitimate Nursing Work? Historical Discursive Constructions of Abortion in The Canadian Nurse, 1950-1965.

PubMed

Haney, Catherine

2014-01-01

To the detriment of women's health, the abortion work of nurses in Canada has gone largely unexamined and is not well understood. This historical discourse analysis examines discursive constructions of nurses' abortion work and ongoing renegotiations of professional identity in The Canadian Nurse from 1950 to 1965. By investigating what has shaped and continues to inform nurses' understandings and enactment of abortion work over time, I hope to contribute to a foundation from which to evaluate contemporary abortion services and to foster conditions that support nurses in providing safe abortion care.

Preservice elementary teachers' use of a discursive model of meaning making in the co-construction of science understanding

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boyer, Elisebeth C.

This research investigates how three preservice elementary teachers were prepared to teach science using a Discursive Model of Meaning Making. The research is divided into two parts. The first consists of the nature of the participants’ learning experiences in a science methods course within a school-university Professional Development School partnership. This part of the investigation used Constant Comparative Analysis of field notes gathered through participant observation of the methods course. The analysis investigated how the methods instructors employed productive questioning, talk moves, and a coherent research based Teaching Science as Argument Framework. The second part of the study consisted of an investigation into how the participants applied what they experienced during the methods course in their initial science teaching experiences, as well as how the participants made sense of their initial science teaching. Data consisted of teaching videos of the participants during their initial science teaching experiences and self-analysis videos created by the participants. This part of the research used Discourse Analysis of the teaching and self-analysis videos. These inquiries provide insight into what aspects of the methods course were taken up by the participants and how they made sense of their practices. Findings are: 1) Throughout the methods course, instructors modeled how the Teaching Science as Argument Framework can be used to negotiate scientific understanding by employing a Discursive Model of Meaning Making. 2) During lesson plan conferences the Discursive Model was emphasized as participants planned classroom discussion and explored possible student responses enabling them to anticipate how they could attempt to increase student understanding. 3) Participants displayed three distinct patterns of adoption of the Teaching Science as Argument Framework (TSAF), involving different discursive practices. They were, • Detached Discursive Approach: Use of some discursive strategies without an apparent connection to the TSAF. • Connected Approach with a Focus on Student Thinking: Intentional use of the Discursive Model informed by aspects of the TSAF. • TSAF Approach: Priority is given to the TSAF supported by substantial application of the Discursive Model. 4) The evidence participants chose to highlight in their self-analysis videos is reflective of their patterns of adoption of the Teaching Science as Argument Framework and their differing discursive practices. Analysis led to the formation of the middle theory that when learning to teach science in the elementary school, teacher commitment to the discourse and practices of science is constructed through participation in a learning community where a discursive model of meaning making is the norm. Curricular and methodological implications, as well as implications for future research are presented.

Giving patients responsibility or fostering mutual response-ability: family physicians' constructions of effective chronic illness management.

PubMed

Thille, Patricia H; Russell, Grant M

2010-10-01

Current visions of family medicine and models of chronic illness management integrate evidence-based medicine with collaborative, patient-centered care, despite critiques that these constructs conflict with each other. With this potential conflict in mind, we applied a critical discursive psychology methodology to present discursive patterns articulated by 13 family physicians in Ontario, Canada, regarding care of patients living with multiple chronic illnesses. Physicians constructed competing versions of the terms "effective chronic illness management" and "patient involvement." One construction integrated individual responsibility for health with primacy of "evidence," resulting in a conceptualization consistent with paternalistic care. The second constructed effective care as involving active partnership of physician and patient, implying a need to foster the ability of both practitioners and patients to respond to complex challenges as they arose. The former pattern is inconsistent with visions of family medicine and chronic illness management, whereas the latter embodies it.

How midwives' discursive practices contribute to the maintenance of the status quo in English maternity care.

PubMed

Pollard, Katherine C

2011-10-01

poor relationships between maternity care professionals still contribute to poor outcomes for childbearing women, although issues concerning power, gender, professionalism and the medicalisation of birth have been identified and discussed as germane to this situation for nearly three decades. Although power relationships and communication issues are known to affect the way maternity care professionals in the UK work together, there has been no study of the interplay between these factors, or of how semiotic aspects of professionals' communication relate to it. to explore how National Health Service midwives' discursive practices relate to the status quo; that is, how they contribute either to maintaining or challenging traditional discourses concerning power, gender, professionalism and the medicalisation of birth. in a qualitative study within a critical discourse analysis framework, data were collected from maternity care professionals and women within one English maternity unit, through semi-structured interviews and observation of physical behaviour and naturally occurring conversation. midwives in the unit revealed an inconsistent professional identity, sometimes challenging established hierarchies and power relationships, but often reinforcing traditional notions of gender, professionalism and the medicalisation of birth through their discursive practices. given the known effect of wider social factors on maternity care, it is not surprising that the status quo persists, and that problems linked to these factors are still commonplace. This situation is compounded by the conflicting obligations under which UK midwives are forced to practice. These findings may have implications for midwives' capacity to respond to current challenges facing the profession. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Disciplining the feminine: the reproduction of gender contradictions in the mental health care of women with eating disorders.

PubMed

Moulding, Nicole

2006-02-01

This paper provides insights into the way gendered assumptions operate within health care interventions for women with eating disorders. A multidisciplinary sample of Australian health care workers were interviewed about their approaches to treatment, and discourse analysis was used to uncover the discursive dynamics and power relations characterising their accounts of intervention. The paper demonstrates a contradictory positioning of anorexic patients in relation to autonomy and control within the two common psychiatric interventions of bed rest intervention and psychotherapy. The paper argues that this is based on gendered assumptions about selfhood and femininity in eating disorders that are reproduced in the therapeutic relationship through the operation of a gendered parent-child dynamic, with the health care worker as father or mother, and the anorexic patient as daughter. One of the main effects of this is to re-inscribe rather than challenge the discursive 'double bind' of femininity that has been widely implicated by post-structural feminists in producing eating disorders in the first place. The paper also considers the widely acknowledged problem of resistance to treatment in anorexia as a function of controlling treatments, and discusses psychiatrists' perspectives on addressing this dilemma. Finally, the paper examines the potential of feminist-informed understandings of eating disorders for overcoming the gendered dilemmas inherent within the dominant psycho-medical treatment paradigm.

Contesting the 'national interest' and maintaining 'our lifestyle': a discursive analysis of political rhetoric around climate change.

PubMed

Kurz, Tim; Augoustinos, Martha; Crabb, Shona

2010-09-01

The release of the fourth United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in February 2007 prompted a flood of responses from political leaders around the globe. Perhaps nowhere was this more apparent than in Australia, where its release coincided with the first sitting week of the Australian Parliament, in an election year. The current study involves a discursive analysis of climate change rhetoric produced by politicians from the major Australian political parties in the period following the release of the IPCC leading up to the national election. Data include both transcripts of parliamentary debate and statements directly broadcast in the media. The analysis focuses on the various ways in which the issue of climate change was invoked and rhetorically managed by each of the two parties in the lead up to the election. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which appeals to the 'national interest' and 'lifestyle maintenance', both regular features of political rhetoric, were mobilized by both parties to discursively manage their positions on the climate change issue. Implications of the ways in which such appeals were constructed are discussed in relation to the discursive limits of the ways in which the issue of climate change is constructed in public debate.

Normalizing ideological food choice and eating practices. Identity work in online discussions on veganism.

PubMed

Sneijder, Petra; Te Molder, Hedwig

2009-06-01

In this paper we use discursive psychology to explore the relation between ideologically based food choice and identity in an online forum on veganism. The discursive psychological perspective underlines the notion of identities being part of social actions performed in talk, and thus designed and deployed for different interactional purposes. It is demonstrated that participants draw on specific discursive devices to (1) define vegan meals as ordinary and easy to prepare and (2) construct methods of preventing vitamin deficiency, such as taking supplements, as routine procedures. In 'doing being ordinary', participants systematically resist the notion that being a vegan is complicated--in other words, that it is both difficult to compose a meal and to protect your health. In this way, 'ordinariness' helps to construct and protect veganism as an ideology. We point out similarities and differences with other studies on eating or healthy lifestyles and argue, more broadly, that identities and their category-bound features are part and parcel of participants' highly flexible negotiation package.

Applying discursive approaches to health psychology.

PubMed

Seymour-Smith, Sarah

2015-04-01

The aim of this paper is to outline the contribution of two strands of discursive research, glossed as 'macro' and 'micro,' to the field of health psychology. A further goal is to highlight some contemporary debates in methodology associated with the use of interview data versus more naturalistic data in qualitative health research. Discursive approaches provide a way of analyzing talk as a social practice that considers how descriptions are put together and what actions they achieve. A selection of recent examples of discursive research from one applied area of health psychology, studies of diet and obesity, are drawn upon in order to illustrate the specifics of both strands. 'Macro' discourse work in psychology incorporates a Foucauldian focus on the way that discourses regulate subjectivities, whereas the concept of interpretative repertoires affords more agency to the individual: both are useful for identifying the cultural context of talk. Both 'macro' and 'micro' strands focus on accountability to varying degrees. 'Micro' Discursive Psychology, however, pays closer attention to the sequential organization of constructions and focuses on naturalistic settings that allow for the inclusion of an analysis of the health professional. Diets are typically depicted as an individual responsibility in mainstream health psychology, but discursive research highlights how discourses are collectively produced and bound up with social practices. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Constructing Moral Authority: "We" in the Discourse of Television News.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baym, Geoffrey

2000-01-01

Contributes to scholarship advancing the understanding of human communication. Examines how journalists construct their authority to tell moralizing stories. Shows how journalists construct a discursive strategy asserting their right to serve as moral agents on two levels: as "institutional we," determining the "facts," and as…

Discursive construction of polyphony in healthcare management.

PubMed

Hujala, Anneli; Rissanen, Sari

2012-01-01

The aim of the paper is to understand and define how the polyphony of management is constructed in interaction and to describe this through concrete management meeting cases. Polyphony refers to the diverse voices of various organization members, and how these voices are present, disclosed and utilized in management. The study is based on the social constructionist and discursive perspectives of management, which question the traditional, individualistic approaches of management. The issue was examined through a qualitative case study by analysing the micro-level management discourse in three healthcare organizations. Discursive practices that enhance or inhibit polyphony are often unnoticed and unconscious. Key moments of management discourse are an example of unconscious mundane practices through which members of organizations construct the reality of management. The empirical results are locally contextual. In the future, research will be able to apply the approach to diverse contexts as well as link micro-level discourses to the construction of broader health and social management discourses. The paper increases the understanding of how to enhance participation and staff contribution, and how to utilize the knowledge of all members of the organization. Both managers and other staff members are fully involved in the social construction of management. Micro-level discourse should be paid attention to in management work as well as in the education of managers and staff. The study increases the understanding of micro-level issues of management and challenges the conventional, taken-for-granted assumptions behind organization and management theories.

The crooked timber of identity: Integrating discursive, critical, and psychosocial analysis.

PubMed

Kaposi, David

2013-06-01

This paper seeks to contribute to the growing band of constructionist approaches within the field of identity studies (Wetherell & Moharty, 2010). First, it will review the developments that have taken place since the emergence of these approaches in the 1980s, identifying a state of fragmentation into local discursive, political-moral, and psychosocial levels of analysis. Second, and in order to challenge this fragmentation, it will present a rhetorical psychological (Billig, 1987, 1999a) analysis of the classic exchange of public letters between Israeli historian of Judaism Gershom Scholem and American political theorist Hannah Arendt in the wake of the latter's book Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt, 1994a). The analysis will proceed from local discursive action, through political-moral frameworks, to the nature of the writers' investment in these constructions. It will show that while the participants' implicitly occasioning of extreme identity categories (such as the 'Jewish anti-Semite' and the totalitarian-style religious Zionist ideologue) is a function of apparently incommensurable political-moral discourses, the nature of investment into such constructions may be understood in a mutual commitment to the absolute inalienability of Jewishness. Third, therefore, the paper will conclude that, rather than constituting separate 'levels', local discursive action, political-moral intelligibilities, and psychosocial qualities are mutually constitutive of each other. It is only through recognizing their inter-dependent nature that the complexity of identity may properly be addressed. ©2011 The British Psychological Society.

Power lines: Derrida, discursive psychology and the management of accusations of teacher bullying.

PubMed

Hepburn, A

2000-12-01

This study connects broad issues of classroom control and the disciplining of pupils by teachers with a detailed examination of the way teachers deal with an implied accusation that they have been bullying. The analysis of interviews develops with reference to discursive psychology and Derrida's development of deconstruction. Billig's (1992) insights into ways that participants' accounts can neutralize threats to established social arrangements are employed in relating detailed analytic points to the broader power relations between teacher and pupil. Interviews were conducted with Scottish secondary school teachers, and subjected to close textual analysis. This resulted in the development of three themes: (1) Subjectivity Construction, in which the functional role of the construction of mental entities is examined; (2) Normalizing Techniques, identifying strategies whereby intimidation can be constructed as normal; and (3) Figuration, examining the utility of figurative language--metaphors, maxims, and so on. These themes display the subtlety and complexity of teachers' strategies for distancing themselves from being held accountable for reported intimidation. To conclude, three broader features of the study are discussed: the contribution to discursive psychology that Derrida's deconstructive philosophy can make; the respecification of psychology and subjectivity as participants' resources for action; and the contribution that this type of detailed study can make to issues of power and social critique.

Collective Biography and Memory Work: Girls Reading Fiction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gannon, Susanne

2015-01-01

Collective biography draws on memory work methods developed initially by feminist sociologists (Haug et al., 1987) where people collaboratively examined the social and discursive resources through which they take themselves up as particular gendered subjects in the world. Their own memories become resources to investigate processes of…

'Please don't put the whole dang thing out there!': a discursive analysis of internet discussions around infant feeding.

PubMed

Callaghan, Jane E M; Lazard, Lisa

2012-01-01

The promotion of breastfeeding is an important focus of intervention for professionals working to improve infant health outcomes. Literature in this area focuses largely on 'choices' and 'barriers to breastfeeding'. It is our argument, however, that women's cultural context plays a key role in infant feeding 'choices'. In this article, we explore contested representations of infant feeding and infant feeding choices in public debates conducted on a large British parenting website. To sample dominant representations of infant feeding circulating in UK culture, two threads were chosen from the debating board of a busy online parenting community (105 and 99 individual posts, respectively). Participants on the threads were largely women. A feminist informed Foucauldian discourse analysis was used to deconstruct the intersecting constructions of gender, childhood and motherhood implicit in public discussions about infant feeding choices. We identify dominant constructions of women who breastfeed or bottle feed, social representations of both forms of infant feeding, and explore the relationship between constructions of infant feeding choices and constructions of 'good' or 'bad' motherhood. This analysis functions to trouble the individualist assumptions underpinning the notion of infant feeding 'choices', considering the cultural context within which British mothers 'choose' how to feed their babies.

Dualing with Gender: Teachers' Work, Careers and Leadership in Physical Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Webb, Louisa; Macdonald, Doune

2007-01-01

The discursive practices of physical education reflect not only the expectations and constraints of discourses in the wider society, educational organizations and bureaucracies, but also the pervasive influences of working with and within sport. Within physical education, and specifically in the lives, work and careers of physical education…

Black Womanhood and Feminist Standpoints.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Allen, Brenda J.

1998-01-01

Discusses challenges and consequences of being a member of two historically oppressed groups in the United States--Blacks and females. Relies on feminist standpoint theory--a distinctive element of contemporary feminist thought about how knowledge is constructed. Focuses on academe as a discursive site for constructing identity. (PA)

Re-Presenting Women and Leadership: A Methodological Journey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilkinson, Jane; Blackmore, Jill

2008-01-01

Research on women's leadership has tended to focus upon detailed micro studies of individual women's identity formation or, alternatively, to conduct macro studies of its broader discursive constructions within society. Both approaches, although providing helpful understandings of the issues surrounding constructions of women's leadership, are…

"The Biggest Problem": School Leaders' Covert Construction of Latino ELL Families--Institutional Racism in a Neoliberal Schooling Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Briscoe, Felecia M.

2014-01-01

This critical discourse analysis focuses upon the discursive construction of Latino English language learners (ELL) identity within a Texas neoliberal schooling context. Qualitative content analysis was used to examine the construction of Latino ELL identities in the discourses of Texas school leaders practicing under the aegis of neoliberal…

Wait Up!: Attachment and Sovereign Power

PubMed Central

Duschinsky, Robbie; Greco, Monica; Solomon, Judith

2017-01-01

Sociologists and feminist scholars have, over many decades, characterised attachment as a social construction that functions to support political and gender conservatism. We accept that attachment theory has seen use to these ends and consider recent deployments of attachment theory as justification for a minimal State within conservative political discourse in the UK since 2009. However, we contest that attachment is reducible to its discursive construction. We consider Judith Butler’s depiction of the infant attached to an abusive caregiver as a foundation and parallel to the position of the adult citizen subjected to punitive cultural norms and political institutions. We develop and qualify Butler’s account, drawing on the insights offered by the work of Lauren Berlant. We also return to Foucault’s Psychiatric Power lectures, in which familial relations are situated as an island of sovereign power within the sea of modern disciplinary institutions. These reflections help advance analysis of three important issues: the social and political implications of attachment research; the relationship between disciplinary and sovereign power in the affective dynamic of subjection; and the political and ethical status of professional activity within the psy disciplines. PMID:28904425

Wait Up!: Attachment and Sovereign Power.

PubMed

Duschinsky, Robbie; Greco, Monica; Solomon, Judith

2015-09-01

Sociologists and feminist scholars have, over many decades, characterised attachment as a social construction that functions to support political and gender conservatism. We accept that attachment theory has seen use to these ends and consider recent deployments of attachment theory as justification for a minimal State within conservative political discourse in the UK since 2009. However, we contest that attachment is reducible to its discursive construction. We consider Judith Butler's depiction of the infant attached to an abusive caregiver as a foundation and parallel to the position of the adult citizen subjected to punitive cultural norms and political institutions. We develop and qualify Butler's account, drawing on the insights offered by the work of Lauren Berlant. We also return to Foucault's Psychiatric Power lectures, in which familial relations are situated as an island of sovereign power within the sea of modern disciplinary institutions. These reflections help advance analysis of three important issues: the social and political implications of attachment research; the relationship between disciplinary and sovereign power in the affective dynamic of subjection; and the political and ethical status of professional activity within the psy disciplines.

Imagining female citizenship in the "New Spain": gendering the democratic transition, 1975-1978.

PubMed

Radcliff, P B

2001-01-01

This article analyses the contestation over female citizenship in Spain's transition to democracy in the mid 1970s. It posits that the transition opened up a discursive space for the construction of a new concept of female citizenship, which was filled with competing images of female citizens, from the Francoist housewife to the consumer activist to the feminist. Through a close reading of the democratic press, the article explores the contradictions and tensions involved in imagining a new female citizen for a democratic Spain. With a focus on the representation of feminist citizenship, the article argues that the central tension surrounding female citizenship was the contradiction between new modes of female participation, new sets of rights and a framework of meaning which could not make sense of these changes. As a result, there was no comfortable place for the female citizen in the emerging master narrative of the transition.

Gender Writ Small: Gender Enactments and Gendered Narratives about Lab Organization and Knowledge Transmission in a Biomedical Engineering Research Setting

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Malone, Kareen Ror; Nersessian, Nancy J.; Newstetter, Wendy

This article presents qualitative data and offers some innovative theoretical approaches to frame the analysis of gender in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) settings. It begins with a theoretical discussion of a discursive approach to gender that captures how gender is lived "on the ground." The authors argue for a less individualistic approach to gender. Data for this research project was gathered from intensive interviews with lab members and ethnographic observations in a biomedical engineering lab. Data analysis relied on a mixed methodology involving qualitative approaches and dialogues with findings from other research traditions. Three themes are highlighted: lab dynamics in relation to issues of critical mass, the division of labor, and knowledge transmission. The data illustrate how gender is created in interactions and is inflected through forms of social organization.

Changing the Place of Teacher Education: Feminism, Fear, and Pedagogical Paradoxes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jones, Stephanie; Hughes, Hilary E.

2016-01-01

In this article, Stephanie Jones and Hilary E. Hughes suggest that particular discursive lessons are readily available in justice-oriented teacher education which might influence a pedagogy that crowds out responsiveness, the experience of the student, and the role of gender and feminism in teacher education. They contend that changing the place…

Exploring Women Faculty's Experiences and Perceptions in Higher Education: The Effects of Feminism?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Midkiff, Brooke

2015-01-01

This study analyses women faculty's discourse about feminism, themselves, and their professional experiences as scholars in the North American university context. This case study pushes at the boundaries of what we believe we know about "the gender question" in the academy, opening a discursive space for scholars to examine university…

Linking Transnational Logics: A Feminist Rhetorical Analysis of Public Policy Networks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dingo, Rebecca

2008-01-01

In this article, the author investigates the circulation and appropriation of representations of women in public policy. The author effectively mobilizes the metaphor of the network to examine the discursive intersections and transnational links between U.S. welfare programs and the World Bank gender mainstreaming policies. Her analysis reveals…

"Don't Be a Whore, that's Not Ladylike": Discursive Discipline and Sorority Women's Gendered Subjectivity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berbary, Lisbeth A.

2012-01-01

While multiple and competing understandings of sororities exist in popular culture, academic research on sororities tends to homogenize the experience of sorority women, simplifying their existence to a quantitative understanding of specific behaviors such as those associated with binge drinking, eating disorders, and heterosexuality.…

"Our Common World" Belongs to "Us": Constructions of Otherness in Education for Sustainable Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ideland, Malin; Malmberg, Claes

2014-01-01

The aim of this article is to analyse how good intentions in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) discursively construct and maintain differences between "Us" and "Them". The empirical material consists of textbooks about sustainable development used in Swedish schools. An analysis of how "Us" and…

The Construction of the Teacher's Authority in Pedagogic Discourse

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wenren, Xing

2014-01-01

This article examines the discursive construction of the authoritative identity of teachers in relation to a number of issues in the classroom context, including identity negotiation, pedagogic discourse and teacher-student power relationship. A variety of classroom teacher talks are analyzed from a discourse analytical perspective, revealing the…

Educational Psychologists' Constructions of Sexuality and the Implications for Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marks, Chloe

2012-01-01

Despite an underlying inclusion agenda, sexuality equality remains a low priority in education. Review of literature suggests the marginalization of sexual minority young people (SMYP) in schools. This study explores educational psychologists' (EPs') constructions of sexuality and the implications for practice. Discursive psychology was used to…

"Cooking Lunch, That's Swiss": Constructing Hybrid Identities Based on Socio-Cultural Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gonçalves, Kellie

2013-01-01

This study looks at the discursive construction and negotiation of hybrid identities within binational couples. I analyze conversations produced by Anglophones married to German-speaking Swiss residing in central Switzerland. I employ Bucholtz & Hall's sociocultural linguistic model (2004, 2005, 2010), which views identity as emergent in…

Caring to death: the murder of patients by nurses.

PubMed

Field, John; Pearson, Alan

2010-06-01

Beyond the initial 'shock-horror' reaction in the mass media, little attention is paid by nurses or the public to nurses who murder patients. This study used discursive inquiry to uncover social constructions of this phenomenon and their implications for the definition and treatment of such murders. The mass media and professional literature were searched for commentary on cases of nurses who had been convicted of murder between 1980 and 2006. The retrieved texts were subjected to discursive analysis. Discursive constructions included the profile of murderous nurses; types of murders; contexts in which murder occurs; factors that aid detection and apprehension; legal processes and punishment; and reactions of the public, profession, regulators and families. The findings imply that murder of a patient by a nurse might occur in any setting in which nurses care for vulnerable patients--the old, the young, the sick and the disabled. Trust in nurses assists a nurse to murder. Nurses have a responsibility to understand how their workplaces can form crucibles in which murder can take place. The profession needs to acknowledge the possibility of nurses who murder patients and to commence a discussion about what might be done to limit the harm they do.

Socio-environmental cooperation and conflict? A discursive understanding and its application to the case of Israel and Palestine

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ide, T.; Fröhlich, C.

2015-10-01

The existing literature faces difficulties when accounting for the simultaneity of socio-environmental conflict and cooperation. We suggest that this puzzle can be solved by more recent constructivist works, which argue that conflictive or cooperative behavior is driven by discursively constructed interests, identities and situation assessments. Based on a literature review and field interviews, we analyze and compare the dominant water discourses in Israel and Palestine with the discourse dominant among the activists of a water cooperation project between communities from Israel and the West Bank. Our main result is that discourses are indeed crucial for understanding water-related conflict and cooperation. This finding highlights the relevance of constructivist approaches in the study of socio-environmental conflict and cooperation as well as of practices of bottom-up discursive conflict transformation.

Raising Questions About Capitalist Globalization and Universalizing Views on Women: A Transnational Feminist Critique of the World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development.

PubMed

Scheer, Victoria L; Stevens, Patricia E; Mkandawire-Valhmu, Lucy

2016-01-01

Nursing in the United States has embraced global health primarily from a clinical perspective, with emphasis on care delivery to populations in underserved, resource-poor settings. Less attention has been devoted to developing expertise about social, economic, and political contexts that produce ill health around the world. The purpose of this article is to offer a transnational feminist critique of the World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development and to illuminate implications such reports may have in the lives of the world's most marginalized women and girls. We examine the political economy idealized in the report, raising questions about the capitalist framework underpinning its agenda. Second, we examine the assumptive language used in the report, suggesting that it discursively constructs a problematic representation of women in low-income countries. We contend that the report perpetuates a hegemonic discourse of patriarchy and inequality for women in the Global South through the use of an uncontested economic framework and universalist reasoning. We conclude the article with discussion about a transformative policy making that could be more inclusive of the wisdoms, values, and everyday experiences of women living in the Global South and about the vital role nurses can play in advancing gender equity through their active collaboration in policy critique and policy formulation.

In the Making: Constructing In-School Pregnancy in Mozambique

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Salvi, Francesca

2018-01-01

This article examines current in-school pregnancy policy in Mozambique, Decree 39/GM/2003, discussing how it discursively constructs in-school pregnancy as a problem, thereby raising the need to regulate its occurrence. Decree 39/GM/2003 indicates that pregnant schoolgirls should be transferred to night courses in order to complete their…

(Re)Constructing Rurality through Skilled Trades Training

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Power, Nicole Gerarda

2017-01-01

There is a growing body of research interrogating the discursive construction of "rural" in negative terms--as lacking, in decline or in crisis. This paper contributes to this body of literature by taking as its point of departure skilled trades training in Canada's most easterly province, Newfoundland and Labrador. To meet the labour…

Educating Worker-Citizens: Visions and Divisions in Curriculum Texts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Isopahkala-Bouret, Ulpukka; Lappalainen, Sirpa; Lahelma, Elina

2014-01-01

In this article, we are interested in how employment--or employability--is connected to citizenship, and how the ideal subjectivity of worker-citizens is discursively constructed in curriculum texts. The "worker-citizen" is a social construction that connects closely the notion of worker and the notion of citizen. Our analysis is based…

The Discursive Construction of College English Learners' Identity in Cross-Cultural Interactions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gu, Michelle Mingyue

2010-01-01

There are abundant studies on second/foreign language learners' identities. However, there appears to be insufficient longitudinal research on the construction of learners' L2 identities in systematic interactions between fixed dyads in an out-of-class context. Adopting a critical discourse analysis framework (Fairclough, 2003) and suitably…

Speaking about Education Reform: Constructing Failure to Legitimate Entrepreneurial Reforms of Teacher Preparation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hollar, Jesslyn

2017-01-01

This paper investigates how this conception of failure came to prevail in the political discourse around the reform of teacher education. It explores how discursive structures and strategies in two speeches by former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan legitimate a particular construction of the failure of teacher education and encourage…

Teachers Performing Gender and Belonging: A Case Study of How SENCOs Narrate Inclusion Identities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Woolhouse, Clare

2015-01-01

This paper investigates how the narratives Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators (SENCOs) tell can be framed as social, discursive practices and performances of identity by analysing accounts offered in focus groups and life history interviews. I explore how the narratives deployed demonstrate an engagement with a rhetoric about who works in…

Girls' Education and Discursive Spaces for Empowerment: Perspectives from Rural India

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shah, Payal P.

2011-01-01

This article examines a national girls' education program and its role in addressing gender inequality in the Indian state of Gujarat. In 2004, the Ministry of Education, Government of India, enacted the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyala (KGBV) program. As a national program designed to increase educational access for the most marginalized girls, the…

Progress and Backlash in the Wake of "Obergefell": Reaching Conservative Southern Teachers through the Power of Literature

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beck, Scott A.; Walker-DeVose, Dina; Agnich, Laura E.; Town, Caren; Smith, Trina

2017-01-01

This paper uses a mixed narrative and quantitative analysis to examine how a graduate class of predominantly politically and religiously conservative (self-identified), elementary teachers in the South made discursive sense of gender and sexually diverse (GSD) young adult and children's literature in the context of concurrent, relevant national…

Will Gender Equality Ever Fit In? Contested Discursive Spaces of University Reform

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kreissl, Katharina; Striedinger, Angelika; Sauer, Birgit; Hofbauer, Johanna

2015-01-01

Similar to other European countries, the introduction of non-academic, especially managerial, criteria in higher education has shaped and altered Austrian universities since over a decade. This paper presents the results of a frame analysis of Austrian higher education debates from 1993 until 2010. It outlines how reforms in higher education were…

Chemistry for Whom? Gender Awareness in Teaching and Learning Chemistry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Andersson, Kristina

2017-01-01

Marie Ståhl and Anita Hussénius have defined what discourses dominate national tests in chemistry for Grade 9 in Sweden by using feminist, critical didactic perspectives. This response seeks to expand the results in Ståhl and Hussénius's article "Chemistry inside an epistemological community box!--Discursive exclusions and inclusions in the…

Guilty or Not Guilty? How Nigerian Families Impede the Aspirations of Nigerian Girls for Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Onochie, Okeke Chinedu Ifedi

2010-01-01

The females' relatively low participation in higher education is discussed within the Nigerian society in a way that such issues are discursively placed in often contradictory, as well as extremely complicated contexts. Dominant discussions draw on the interplay between gender and students' performance across subjects, as well as on the influences…

University Autonomy, Agenda Setting and the Construction of Agency: The Case of the European University Association in the European Higher Education Area

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nokkala, Terhi; Bacevic, Jana

2014-01-01

This article analyses the ways in which a policy actor constructs its agency through the production of knowledge. Taking the example of the concept of "autonomy" as constructed in the discourse of the European University Association (EUA), the article draws on the theory of discursive framing and agenda setting, as well as on Meyer and…

From Monologue to Dialogue: Interpreting Social Constructivism with a Bakhtinian Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mishra, Rishabh Kumar

2015-01-01

At present it is a well-established idea that the construction of knowledge is a process of co-construction of meanings through participation in socially negotiated and discursive activity. The pedagogic translation of this idea owes its root to a social constructivist perspective of development and learning. It envisages teaching-learning as a…

Contextualising "Education in Pakistan, a White Paper": Global/National Articulations in Education Policy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lingard, Bob; Ali, Sajid

2009-01-01

This article contextualises "Education in Pakistan, a White Paper" (2007), an influential education policy paper in Pakistan. The focus is on the ways the White Paper constructs its own contexts as a complement to the policy solutions proffered. Here we recognise Seddon's point about the discursive work of policy in constructing context.…

A Scientist or Salesman? Identity Construction through Referent Honorifics on a Japanese Shopping Channel Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cook, Haruko Minegishi

2013-01-01

This paper explores how referent honorifics contribute to identity construction on a Japanese TV shopping channel program. Drawing on Ochs' twostep model of indexicality (1993, 1996) and Agah's proposal (1993) that honorifics are not directly linked to social status but index a "relative position within events of discursive interaction"…

Agency Construction and Navigation in Oral Narratives of English Learning by Chinese College English Majors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Qiuming

2017-01-01

The current study aims to investigate the discursive construction and navigation of agency in oral narratives of English learning by Chinese college English majors. Based on the theoretical framework integrating Bamberg et. al.'s theory of identity dilemma and Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics, the study has addressed two research…

The Multifaceted Ecology of Language Play in an Elementary School EFL Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kang, Dae-Min

2017-01-01

Language play (LP) in second language (L2) classrooms has attracted increasing attention in recent years, but descriptions and explanations of LP construction in English as a foreign language (EFL) settings remain insufficient. This paper reports the discursive processes of LP construction in an elementary school EFL classroom in Korea. I found…

Producing Alternative Gender Orders: A Critical Look at Girls and Gaming

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fisher, Stephanie; Jenson, Jennifer

2017-01-01

This article examines some of the ways in which girls are discursively set up as subordinate in relation to boys and men by and within the digital games industry and culture at large, and how they push back on these imposed subjects positions when engaging in media production (game development) under both regular and inverse conditions. Expanding…

HIV positive men as fathers: Accounts of displacement, ir/responsibility and paternal emergence.

PubMed

Highton, Sean; Finn, Mark D

2016-05-01

It is now apparent that socio-cultural constructions of masculinity variously impact men's experiences of their HIV positive status, yet how being a father can feature in this mix remains under-researched. This study employed in-depth semi-structured interviews and Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis to explore the accounts of six self-identifying heterosexual fathers (four Black African migrants, two White European) who had been living with HIV from 5 to 24 years. While the HIV-related literature calls for the need to subvert 'traditional' expressions of masculinity as a means of promoting HIV prevention and HIV health, we argue that the lived experience for HIV positive men as fathers is more socially, discursively and thus more psychologically nuanced. We illustrate this by highlighting ways in which HIV positive men as fathers are not simply making sense of themselves as a HIV positive man for whom the modern (new) man and father positions are useful strategies for adapting to HIV and combating associated stigma. Discourses of modern and patriarchal fatherhoods, a gender-specific discourse of irresponsibility and the neoliberal conflation of heath and self-responsibility are also at work in the sense-making frames that HIV positive men, who are also fathers, can variously deploy. Our analysis shows how this discursive mix can underpin possibilities of often conflicted meaning and identity when living as a man and father with HIV in the United Kingdom, and specifically how discourses of fatherhood and HIV 'positive' health can complicate these men's expressions and inhabitations of masculinity. © The Author(s) 2015.

"You" and "I," "us " and them: a systemic-discursive approach to the study of ethnic stereotypes in the context of British-Greek heterosexual couple relationships.

PubMed

Tseliou, Eleftheria; Eisler, Ivan

2007-12-01

Systemic family therapy accounts of ethnic stereotypes in the context of ethnically mixed couple relationships have tended to focus on the interpersonal-psychological realm of the couple relationship. Discourse analytic research, on the other hand, has highlighted the role of such stereotypes in the construction of national identity and has stressed the importance of a historical and ideological approach. In this article, we will present our attempt to develop a systemic-discursive approach to the study of stereotypes in the particular context of British-Greek heterosexual couple relationships by building on both fields.

The global reproductive health market: U.S. media framings and public discourses about transnational surrogacy.

PubMed

Markens, Susan

2012-06-01

During the first decade of the 21st century a new "dramatic story" about the growing global surrogacy industry brought renewed attention to surrogacy as a social problem and a health policy issue. This paper asks: What cultural assumptions about gender, family and the global reproductive health market are revealed in current U.S. media coverage of and public discourses about surrogacy? From a qualitative analysis of prominent news accounts of surrogacy that were published in 2008, New York Times articles and blogs published on the topic between 2006 and 2010, and over 1000 online reader comments to these articles, I identify key frames used to discursively construct and debate the international surrogacy market. This study reveals the distinct contrast between the occasions when reproductive labor is rhetorically distanced from commodification processes and when it is linked to those processes. The findings contribute to intersectional analyses of assisted reproductive practices and women's health/bodies/gametes. In particular, this study's analysis of recent media framings of and public discourses about surrogacy across the globe serves as another illustration that national/classed/racialized bodies continue to be reproductively stratified via differently gendered discourses about women, motherhood and family. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

"You Worry, 'cause You Want to Give a Reasonable Account of Yourself": Gender, Identity Management, and the Discursive Positioning of "Risk" in Men's and Women's Talk About Heterosexual Casual Sex.

PubMed

Farvid, Panteá; Braun, Virginia

2018-07-01

Heterosexual casual sex is routinely depicted as a physically, socially, and psychologically "risky" practice. This is the case in media accounts, psychological research, and other academic work. In this article, we examine 15 men's and 15 women's talk about casual sex from a discursive psychological stance to achieve two objectives. Firstly, we confirm the categories of risk typically associated with casual sex but expand these to include a domain of risks related to (gendered) identities and representation. Men's talk of risk centered on concerns about sexual performance, whereas women's talk centered on keeping safe from violence and sexual coercion. The notion of a sexual reputation was also identified as a risk and again manifested differently for men and women. While women were concerned about being deemed promiscuous, men displayed concern about the quality of their sexual performance. Secondly, within this talk about risks of casual sex, the participants' identities were identified as "at risk" and requiring careful management within the interview context. This was demonstrated by instances of: keeping masculinity intact in accounts of no erection, negotiating a responsible subject position, and crafting agency in accounts of sexual coercion-in the participants' talk. We argue that casual sex, as situated within dominant discourses of gendered heterosexuality, is a fraught practice for both men and women and subject to the demands of identity representation within co-present interactions.

[Gender performativity, medicalization and health in transsexual women in Mexico City].

PubMed

Cosme, José Arturo Granados; Ramírez, Pedro Alberto Hernández; Muñoz, Omar Alejandro Olvera

2017-01-01

The World Health Organization and the American Psychological Association consider transsexuality a pathology and suggest sex-gender reassignment for the biopsychic adjustment of trans people. Through the discursive analysis of experience, this study describes the processes of medicalization and gender performativity in relation to the health of a group of trans women from Mexico City. For this purpose, a qualitative study was conducted in which 10 semi-structured interviews were carried out in 2015. As part of medicalization, the pathologization of transsexuality generated psychic suffering; on the other hand, sex-gender reassignment also entailed additional risks. It is possible to conclude that in trans women, violence and exclusion constitute the primary experiences explaining their foremost health problems. Therefore, it is suggested that it is necessary for discrimination be reduced and for advancements to be made in safer medical interventions.

Chemistry for whom? Gender awareness in teaching and learning chemistry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Andersson, Kristina

2017-06-01

Marie Ståhl and Anita Hussénius have defined what discourses dominate national tests in chemistry for Grade 9 in Sweden by using feminist, critical didactic perspectives. This response seeks to expand the results in Ståhl and Hussénius's article Chemistry inside an epistemological community box!— Discursive exclusions and inclusions in the Swedish national tests in chemistry, by using different facets of gender awareness. The first facet—Gender awareness in relations to the test designers' own conceptions—highlighted how the gender order where women are subordinated men becomes visible in the national tests as a consequence of the test designers internalized conceptions. The second facet—Gender awareness in relation to chemistry—discussed the hierarchy between discourses within chemistry. The third facet—Gender awareness in relation to students—problematized chemistry in relation to the students' identity formation. In summary, I suggest that the different discourses can open up new ways to interpret chemistry and perhaps dismantle the hegemonic chemistry discourse.

Negotiating Afrikaner Subjectivity from the Post-Apartheid Margins: One Student's Subject Positions in the Discursively Constructed Classroom Space at an Elite English High School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferreira, Ana

2014-01-01

The contemporary South African subject English classroom is a complex space requiring ongoing attention to issues of cultural and linguistic diversity, and frequently manifesting the need to work across historically constructed differences in race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. This article reports on one aspect of a broader research…

Verbal communication skills in typical language development: a case series.

PubMed

Abe, Camila Mayumi; Bretanha, Andreza Carolina; Bozza, Amanda; Ferraro, Gyovanna Junya Klinke; Lopes-Herrera, Simone Aparecida

2013-01-01

The aim of the current study was to investigate verbal communication skills in children with typical language development and ages between 6 and 8 years. Participants were 10 children of both genders in this age range without language alterations. A 30-minute video of each child's interaction with an adult (father and/or mother) was recorded, fully transcribed, and analyzed by two trained researchers in order to determine reliability. The recordings were analyzed according to a protocol that categorizes verbal communicative abilities, including dialogic, regulatory, narrative-discursive, and non-interactive skills. The frequency of use of each category of verbal communicative ability was analyzed (in percentage) for each subject. All subjects used more dialogical and regulatory skills, followed by narrative-discursive and non-interactive skills. This suggests that children in this age range are committed to continue dialog, which shows that children with typical language development have more dialogic interactions during spontaneous interactions with a familiar adult.

'I am not a dyslexic person I'm a person with dyslexia': identity constructions of dyslexia among students in nurse education.

PubMed

Evans, William

2014-02-01

To introduce how nursing students discursively construct their dyslexic identities. Identity mediates many important facets of a student's scholarly journey and the availability and use of discourses play a critical part in their ongoing construction. A discourse-based design was used to examine the language employed by students in constructing their dyslexic identities. Using narrative methods, 12 student nurses with dyslexia from two higher education institutions in the Republic of Ireland were interviewed during the period February-July 2012. Discourse analysis of interviews entailed a two-stage approach: leading identity analysis followed by thematic analysis. Discourses used by students to construct their dyslexic identity correspond with positions on an 'Embracer, Passive Engager and Resister' continuum heuristic. The majority of students rejected any reference to using medical or disabled discourses and instead drew on contemporary language in constructing their dyslexic identity. Nine of the 12 students did not disclose their dyslexic identity in practice settings and drew on not being understood to support this position. In addition, a discourse linking 'being stupid' with dyslexia was pervasive in most student narratives and evolved from historical as well as more recent interactions in nurse education. This study indicates variation in how students discursively construct their dyslexic identities, which, in turn, has an impact on disclosure behaviours. Policy leaders must continue to be mindful of wider sociocultural and individualized understandings of dyslexic identities to enhance inclusion prerogatives. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Silencing women’s sexuality: global AIDS policies and the case of the female condom

PubMed Central

Peters, Anny JTP; van Driel, Francien TM; Jansen, Willy HM

2013-01-01

Introduction The female condom is the only evidence-based AIDS prevention technology that has been designed for the female body; yet, most women do not have access to it. This is remarkable since women constitute the majority of all HIV-positive people living in sub-Saharan Africa, and gender inequality is seen as a driving force of the AIDS epidemic. In this study, we analyze how major actors in the AIDS prevention field frame the AIDS problem, in particular the female condom in comparison to other prevention technologies, in their discourse and policy formulations. Our aim is to gain insight into the discursive power mechanisms that underlie the thinking about AIDS prevention and women’s sexual agency. Methods We analyze the AIDS policies of 16 agencies that constitute the most influential actors in the global response to AIDS. Our study unravels the discursive power of these global AIDS policy actors, when promoting and making choices between AIDS prevention technologies. We conducted both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of how the global AIDS epidemic is being addressed by them, in framing the AIDS problem, labelling of different categories of people for targeting AIDS prevention programmes and in gender marking of AIDS prevention technologies. Results We found that global AIDS policy actors frame the AIDS problem predominantly in the context of gender and reproductive health, rather than that of sexuality and sexual rights. Men’s sexual agency is treated differently from women’s sexual agency. An example of such differentiation and of gender marking is shown by contrasting the framing and labelling of male circumcision as an intervention aimed at the prevention of HIV with that of the female condom. Conclusions The gender-stereotyped global AIDS policy discourse negates women’s agency in sexuality and their sexual rights. This could be an important factor in limiting the scale-up of female condom programmes and hampering universal access to female condoms. PMID:23838151

'Health should not have to be a problem': talking health and accountability in an internet forum on veganism.

PubMed

Sneijder, Petra; te Molder, Hedwig F M

2004-07-01

This article draws upon insights from discursive psychology to examine how participants in an Internet forum on veganism orient to the relationship between food choice, health and accountability. First, we explore the ways in which participants ascribe responsibility for health problems like vitamin deficiency to individual recipients. By suggesting individual practices as a cause for problems, speakers undermine the notion that problems arise through veganism as a matter of principle. Second, we show how participants construct solutions to individual health problems as involving mundane and simple actions. Both discursive procedures enable speakers to resist negative assumptions about the potentially complicated nature of veganism in relation to health protection.

Gender performance in an out-of-school science context

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Silfver, Eva

2018-03-01

This article examines how school students perform gender during a visit to a science centre where they programme Lego cars. The focus is on how students relate to each other—how they talk and what they do. Theoretically, the article draws on the `heterosexual matrix' and a Foucauldian understanding of how power and knowledge are tightly interwoven and that discursive practices regulate people's possible positions and ways of being in different situations and contexts. The analysis is primarily based on video data from the science centre and a number of student interviews. The article gives several examples of how stereotypical gender performances are maintained but also challenged. This is important knowledge, because if we want to challenge norms, we first need to see them and understand how they are reproduced.

"If they can't tell the difference between duphalac and digoxin you've got patient safety issues". Nurse Lecturers' constructions of students' dyslexic identities in nurse education.

PubMed

Evans, William

2014-06-01

The paper explores how student nurses with a dyslexic identity were discursively constructed by lecturing staff in nurse education. An increasing number of students completing programmes of study in higher education are registering and disclosing one or more disabilities to their respective institutional support services. As students with dyslexia enter the nursing profession, they bring with them their own unique identity that situates their disability in a specific light. Nurse lecturers play an integral role in supporting all students including those with a disability; however no previous research has attempted to examine the language they use to construct students with a dyslexic identity. Critically, the internalised views of those with teaching and learning responsibilities who directly interact with students with disabilities have a critical influence on the nature of the supports provided, as well as decisions about students' professional competence. Discussions that centre on the inclusion of individuals with disability in healthcare education are shaped by language and diverse ways of understanding, therefore, an exploratory discursive design, examining how dyslexic identities are socially constructed by nurse lecturers is an overarching focus of the paper. Using narrative interviewing, twelve nurse lecturers from two higher education institutions in the Republic of Ireland were interviewed during the period February to July 2012. Discourse analysis was guided by a narrative-discursive approach. Nurse lecturers identified 'Getting the work done' as a critical component to becoming a nurse, where expectations associated with efficiency and independence superseded students' right to accommodation. An implicit mild-severe binary existed amongst lecturers while categorising students with dyslexia, with those placed in the latter considered professionally unsuitable. These concerns are individually critiqued. Critically, policy leaders must continue to consider wider sociocultural as well as individualised understandings of dyslexic identities in order to enhance inclusion prerogatives. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Autism, "recovery (to normalcy)", and the politics of hope.

PubMed

Broderick, Alicia A

2009-08-01

This article draws on the traditions of critical discourse analysis (N. Fairclough, 1995, 2001; M. Foucault, 1972, 1980; J. P. Gee, 1999) in critically examining the discursive formation of "recovery" from autism in applied behavioral analysis (ABA) discourse and its relationship to constructs of hope. Constituted principally in the work of O. I. Lovaas (1987) and C. Maurice (1993), and central to ABA discourse on recovery, has been the construction of a particular vision of hope that has at least 2 integral conceptual elements: (a) Hope for recovery within ABA discourse is constructed in binary opposition to hopelessness, and (b) recovery within ABA discourse is discursively constructed as "recovery (to normalcy)." The author analyzes these 2 pivotal ABA texts within the context of an analysis of other uses of the term recovery in broader bodies of literature: (a) within prior autism-related literature, particularly autobiography, and (b) within literature emanating from the psychiatric survivors' movement. If, indeed, visions of hope inform educational policy and decision making, this analysis addresses S. Danforth's (1997) cogent query, "On what basis hope?", and asserts that moral and political commitments should be central sources of visions of hope and, therefore, inform educational policy and decision making for young children with labels of autism.

Children Using "Facebook": Teachers' Discursive Constructions of Childhood

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang-Kredl, Sandra; Kozak, Stephanie

2018-01-01

Conceptualizations of childhood are powerful determinants of adults' interactions with children, and technology and social networking systems are affecting the nature of teachers' knowledge of childhood. We analyzed questionnaire responses from 57 elementary-level teachers from Quebec regarding children's use of "Facebook". Through…

Discursive Constructions of Web Learning and Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boshier, Roger; Onn, Chia Mun

2000-01-01

Discusses Web-based learning and distance education and compares four discourses and their manifestations in North America and Asia that shape Web educational practice: techno-utopianism, techno-cynicism, techno-zealotry, and techno-structuralism. Concludes that techno-utopian discourse impedes Web development through claims about paradigm shifts…

Imagination, the Individual and the Global Media.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Misson, Ray

The relationship between imagination, the individual, and the global media was examined. The examination focused on two underpinning theorizations of individuality, namely, the notion of the "discursive construction of subjectivity" that draws on the work of various poststructuralist thinkers and Judith Baker's notion of the…

Women's collective constructions of embodied practices through memory work: Cartesian dualism in memories of sweating and pain.

PubMed

Gillies, Val; Harden, Angela; Johnson, Katherine; Reavey, Paula; Strange, Vicki; Willig, Carla

2004-03-01

The research presented in this paper uses memory work as a method to explore six women's collective constructions of two embodied practices, sweating and pain. The paper identifies limitations in the ways in which social constructionist research has theorized the relationship between discourse and materiality, and it proposes an approach to the study of embodiment which enjoins, rather than bridges, the discursive and the non-discursive. The paper presents an analysis of 25 memories of sweating and pain which suggests that Cartesian dualism is central to the women's accounts of their experiences. However, such dualism does not operate as a stable organizing principle. Rather, it offers two strategies for the performance of a split between mind and body. The paper traces the ways in which dualism can be both functional and restrictive, and explores the tensions between these two forms. The paper concludes by identifiying opportunities and limitations associated with memory work as a method for studying embodiment.

Class in construction: London building workers, dirty work and physical cultures.

PubMed

Thiel, Darren

2007-06-01

Descriptions of manual employment tend to ignore its diversity and overstate the homogenizing effects of technology and industrialization. Based on ethnographic research on a London construction site, building work was found to be shaped by the forms of a pre-industrial work pattern characterized by task autonomy and freedom from managerial control. The builders' identities were largely free from personal identification as working class, and collective identification was fractured by trade status, and ethnic and gender divisions. Yet the shadow of a class-based discursive symbolism, which centered partly on the division of minds/bodies, mental/manual, and clean/dirty work, framed their accounts, identities and cultures. The builders displayed what is frequently termed working-class culture, and it was highly masculine. This physical and bodily-centered culture shielded them from the possible stigmatization of class and provided them with a source of localized capital. 'Physical capital' in conjunction with social capital (the builders' networks of friends and family) had largely guided their position in the stratification system, and values associated with these forms of capital were paramount to their public cultures. This cultural emphasis offered a continuing functionality in the builders' lives, not having broken free from tradition or becoming an object of reflexive choice.

'Oh, I'm just, you know, a little bit weak because I'm going to the doctor's': young men's talk of self-referral to primary healthcare services.

PubMed

Jeffries, Mark; Grogan, Sarah

2012-01-01

Young men visit their general practitioner (GP) less frequently than young women and tend to utilise primary healthcare services reluctantly. This research aimed to explore the ways young men used their talk to make sense of their own masculinity in the context of their healthcare visits, and to explore the ways they used their talk to make sense of those visits in terms of multiple masculinities and gendered behaviours. This was an important area for research as previous work has not focused on young men. Interviews, lasting approximately 1 h, were conducted by a male researcher with seven men aged 22-33. Questions related to visiting the GP, attention to healthcare and help-seeking behaviours. These were analysed, using an eclectic approach informed by Foucauldian discourse analysis and discursive psychology. Participants subscribed to a hegemonic masculinity that constructed men as strong, stoical and reluctant to seek help. However, at times, these men negotiated and disengaged from such discourses. Women were constructed as immediately responding to symptoms and seeking help for minor illnesses. In contrast to traditional masculinity, the young men drew upon discourses of vulnerability and embarrassment. These results are discussed in relation to their implications for Health Psychology.

Video gaming and sexual violence: rethinking forensic nursing in a digital age.

PubMed

Mercer, Dave; Parkinson, Denis

2014-01-01

This article reports findings from a qualitative study into how forensic nurses, and male personality disordered sexual offenders, talked about "pornography" in one U.K. high-security hospital. Research rationale was rooted in current professional and political debates, adopting a discourse analytic design to situate the project in a clinical context. Semistructured interviews, as co-constructed accounts, explored talk about sexual media, offending, treatment, and risk. Data were analyzed using a version of discourse analysis popular in healthcare research, identifying discursive repertoires, or collective language use, characteristic of the institutional culture. Findings revealed that masculine discourse marginalized female nurses and contradicted therapeutic goals, where men's talk about pornography, sex, and sexual crime represented discriminatory and gendered language. Nursing definitions of pornography were constructed in the context of the client group and an organizational need to manage risk. In a highly controlled environment, with a long-stay population, priority in respondent talk was given to mainstream commercial sexual media and everyday items/images perceived to have embedded sexual meaning. However, little mention was made of contemporary modes of producing/distributing pornography, where sex and sexual violence are enacted in virtual realities of cyberspace. Failure to engage with information technology, and globally mediated sex, is discussed as a growing concern for forensic health workers.

Greenpeace Greenspeak: A Transcultural Discourse Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heinz, Bettina; Cheng, Hsin-I; Inuzuka, Ako

2007-01-01

This cross-cultural discourse analysis examines the construction of environmental issues on Greenpeace web pages in China, Japan and Germany. To uncover the semantic representation of environmental activism on these sites, the authors sought to identify discursive homogeneity and divergence and to bring to light embedded cultural assumptions. The…

Inclusive Education Policies: Discourses of Difference, Diversity and Deficit

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hardy, Ian; Woodcock, Stuart

2015-01-01

This paper provides an analysis of inclusive education policies across international, and Anglo-American national and provincial/state jurisdictions to reveal how policies discursively construct inclusion under current, increasingly neoliberal conditions. In making this case, the paper draws upon primary UNESCO and Organisation for Economic…

The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Riggins, Stephen Harold, Ed.

A collection of essays on "the other" in discourse includes: "The Rhetoric of Othering" (Stephen Harold Riggins); "Political Discourse and Racism: Describing Others in Western Parliaments" (Teun A. van Dijk); "'Das Ausland' and Anti-Semitic Discourse: The Discursive Construction of the Other" (Ruth Wodak);…

Empty Signifiers, Education and Politics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Szkudlarek, Tomasz

2007-01-01

The paper assumes that education is part of the process of discursive construction of society. The theoretical framework on which this argument is based includes Ernesto Laclau's theory of the "ontological impossibility and political necessity of society", and the role discourse and empty signifiers play in the establishment of political…

Emergent Bilinguals: Framing Students as Statistical Data?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koyama, Jill; Menken, Kate

2013-01-01

Immigrant youth who are designated as English language learners in American schools--whom we refer to as "emergent bilinguals"--are increasingly framed by numerical calculations. Utilizing the notion of assemblage from actor-network theory (ANT), we trace how emergent bilinguals are discursively constructed by officials, administrators,…

Rethinking Public Health: Promoting Public Engagement Through a New Discursive Environment

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

I reexamine the notion of public health after reviewing critiques of the prevalent individualistic conception of health. I argue that public health should mean not only the health of the public but also health in the public and by the public, and I expound on the social contingency of health and highlight the importance of the interpersonal dimensions of health conditions and health promotion efforts. Promoting public health requires activating health-enhancing communicative behaviors (such as interpersonal advocacy and mutual responsibility taking) in addition to individual behavioral change. To facilitate such communicative behaviors, it is imperative to first construct a new discursive environment in which to think and talk about health in a language of interdependence and collective efforts. PMID:24228674

Rethinking public health: promoting public engagement through a new discursive environment.

PubMed

Sun, Ye

2014-01-01

I reexamine the notion of public health after reviewing critiques of the prevalent individualistic conception of health. I argue that public health should mean not only the health of the public but also health in the public and by the public, and I expound on the social contingency of health and highlight the importance of the interpersonal dimensions of health conditions and health promotion efforts. Promoting public health requires activating health-enhancing communicative behaviors (such as interpersonal advocacy and mutual responsibility taking) in addition to individual behavioral change. To facilitate such communicative behaviors, it is imperative to first construct a new discursive environment in which to think and talk about health in a language of interdependence and collective efforts.

'We go to the bush to prove that we are also men': traditional circumcision and masculinity in the accounts of men who have sex with men in township communities in South Africa.

PubMed

Lynch, Ingrid; Clayton, Matthew

2017-03-01

In predominantly isiXhosa-speaking township communities in South Africa, men who have sex with men negotiate their identities and sexual practices alongside heteronormative cultural scripts of what it means to be a man. Such idealised notions of masculinity are predicated on the selective appropriation of cultural practices that preserve (heterosexual) male privilege and power. In this paper, we explore the identity work done by men who have sex with men, with particular reference to male circumcision as a cultural practice widely drawn on to inform and regulate normative masculinity. Through a narrative-discursive analysis of the accounts provided by men who have sex with men from township communities, we highlight how participants' dissident sexualities are constructed as compromising their masculine identities. Participating in cultural practices such as traditional circumcision aligns participants to the idealised forms of masculinity that afford men full citizenship in their communities. Study findings suggest that sexual dissidence is less troubling to participants than deviating from gendered markers of hegemonic masculinity, and point to ways in which marginalised men might have an interest in maintaining the dominant gendered order. We conclude with implications for research and programmatic work with gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men.

Young African American children constructing identities in an urban integrated science-literacy classroom

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kane, Justine M.

This is a qualitative study of identities constructed and enacted by four 3rd-grade African American children (two girls and two boys) in an urban classroom that engaged in a year-long, integrated science-literacy project. Juxtaposing narrative and discursive identity lenses, coupled with race and gender perspectives, I examined the ways in which the four children saw and performed themselves as students and as science students in their classroom. Interview data were used for the narrative analysis and classroom Discourse and artifacts were used for the discursive analysis. A constructivist grounded theory framework was adopted for both analyses. The findings highlight the diversity and richness of perspectives and forms of engagement these young children shared and enacted, and help us see African American children as knowers, doers, and talkers of science individually and collectively. In their stories about themselves, all the children identified themselves as smart but they associated with smartness different characteristics and practices depending on their strengths and preferences. Drawing on the children's social, cultural, and ethnolinguistic resources, the dialogic and multimodal learning spaces facilitated by their teacher allowed the children to explore, negotiate, question, and learn science ideas. The children in this study brought their understandings and ways of being into the "lived-in" spaces co-created with classmates and teacher and influenced how these spaces were created. At the same time, each child's ways of being and understandings were shaped by the words, actions, behaviors, and feelings of peers and teacher. Moreover, as these four children engaged with science-literacy activities, they came to see themselves as competent, creative, active participants in science learning. Although their stories of "studenting" seemed dominated by following rules and being well-behaved, their stories of "sciencing" were filled with exploration, ingenuity, risk taking, and thinking. The study calls for (a) research that is positioned within children's perspectives and give voice to the experiences of African American children in urban schools, (b) teacher education that supports teachers' efforts to help urban school students become academically successful, and (c) policy that foregrounds identity development along with subject-matter learning.

Discursive Constructions of "Teacher" in an Educational Technology Journal

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McDonald, Jenny; Loke, Swee-Kin

2016-01-01

The integration of technology with teaching and learning is a significant area of research in the educational technology field. Teachers play an instrumental role in technology integration, and many teacher-related factors have been identified that predict technology use and integration in educational settings. How teachers are represented in the…

Co-Construction of Nonnative Speaker Identity in Cross-Cultural Interaction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Park, Jae-Eun

2007-01-01

Informed by Conversation Analysis, this paper examines discursive practices through which nonnative speaker (NNS) identity is constituted in relation to native speaker (NS) identity in naturally occurring English conversations. Drawing on studies of social interaction that view identity as intrinsically a social, dialogic, negotiable entity, I…

Children's Understandings of Rurality: Exploring the Interrelationship between Experience and Understanding.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCormack, Jaleh

2002-01-01

Explores children's material and discursive experiences of rurality in New Zealand and how they contribute to children's understandings of rurality. Highlights common constructions of reality based on experiences of agriculture, nature, and recreation, as well as children's understandings of rurality from discourse with peers and adults. (Contains…

Becoming a Character for Commerce: Emotion Labor, Self-Subordination, and Discursive Construction of Identity in a Total Institution.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tracy, Sarah J.

2000-01-01

Examines the ways in which emotion labor and burnout are interwoven with issues of societal and organizational norms, power, identity, resistance, and self-control in the context of the job of cruise ship activities director. Discusses theoretical and practical implications. (NH)

Constructing an Identity: Environmental Educators in Mexico

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Amaya, Silvia Fuentes

2004-01-01

The environmental education field in Mexico is a relatively new social space characterized by wide discursive proliferation and organized by regional hegemonies. In this context, a plurality of identification processes has taken place. There is not a singular environmental educator identity but a multiplicity of local definitions. In this paper, I…

Outsiders in Their Homeland: Discursive Construction of Aboriginal Women and Citizenship

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fiske, Jo-Anne; Belanger, Yale D.; Gregory, David

2010-01-01

Confrontations between urban neighborhoods and activist organizations seeking affordable housing and shelter for the homeless are attracting the increased attention of academics and policy makers. Perceived as a problem to be resolved, and constituted as a "syndrome," the social phenomenon "not in my backyard" (NIMBY) is…

Learning Difficulty and Learner Identity: A Symbiotic Relationship

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hirano, Eliana

2009-01-01

This paper reports on a longitudinal case study of an adult EFL learner who perceived himself as having difficulty learning English. Both learning difficulty and learner identity are viewed as being constructed in discursive interactions throughout one's life and, hence, amenable to reconstruction. Data collected from classroom interactions,…

Constructing Practical Knowledge of Teaching: Eleven Newly Qualified Language Teachers' Discursive Agency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ruohotie-Lyhty, Maria

2011-01-01

This paper explores the professional development of 11 newly qualified foreign language teachers. It draws on a qualitative longitudinal study conducted at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland between 2002 and 2009. The paper concentrates on the personal side of teacher development by analysing participants' discourses concerning language…

The Discursive Construction of Literature Review: An Examination of Chinese PhD Students' Information Behavior

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liao, Jiadong; Han, Jinghe

2012-01-01

Information behaviour is a pertinent practice throughout students' research work. However, research students, particularly those with English as an additional language, experienced challenges and complications when studying in a western university. Issues relating to their information behaviour during the research process has largely been…

The Politics of "Being and Becoming" a Researcher: Identity, Power, and Negotiating the Field

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Giampapa, Frances

2011-01-01

This article explores the methodological turning points in conducting a critical ethnography on the discursive practices of Italian Canadian youth identities across their multiple worlds in Toronto (cf. Giampapa, 2004a). Specifically, I aim to problematize the construction of the "researcher," researcher identities, and the…

Locating the Subject: Teens Online @ ninemsn

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atkinson, Stephen; Nixon, Helen

2005-01-01

In this paper we examine how the figure of the teenager is positioned within the discourses and practices of commercial online media. In particular, we explore how the popular, Australia-based web portal "ninemsn" works discursively to shape the identities of young people. Ninemsn not only constructs and circulates selected…

Measuring Up? The Discursive Construction of Student Subjectivities in the Global Children's Challenge™

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Drew, Debbie L.; Gore, Jennifer M.

2016-01-01

International concern about "alarming" levels of childhood obesity has seen a proliferation of interventions filtering into school physical education programmes that are designed to influence children's health practices and attitudes. This article addresses one such obesity-prevention intervention, the Global Children's Challenge™, a…

A General Critical Discourse Analysis Framework for Educational Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mullet, Dianna R.

2018-01-01

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a qualitative analytical approach for critically describing, interpreting, and explaining the ways in which discourses construct, maintain, and legitimize social inequalities. CDA rests on the notion that the way we use language is purposeful, regardless of whether discursive choices are conscious or…

"I Didn't Do Nothin'": The Discursive Construction of School Suspension.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vavrus, Frances; Cole, KimMarie

2002-01-01

Conducted observations, interviews, and videotaped lessons at a multiethnic high school to investigate sociocultural factors influencing school suspension. Suspensions frequently occurred in the absence of physical violence or blatant verbal abuse. Suspensions were generally preceded by a series of nonviolent events, with one disruptive event…

What Kind of Intercultural Competence Will Contribute to Students' Future Job Employability?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Busch, Dominic

2009-01-01

This paper explores the potential benefits of education about intercultural issues for improving a student's future job employability. From the perspective of discourse theory, both job employability and intercultural competence as job qualifications may be taken as discursive constructions. This paper delineates understandings of these concepts…

Crisis Thinking, Sensuous Reflexivity, and Solving Real Issues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jaspers, Jürgen

2016-01-01

In "Voices of Modernity," Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs write their grand overview of the birth and maturation of modernity. Bauman and Briggs understand modernity as a discursive construction that opposes traditional and modern developments, ways of being, and modes of understanding. Central in this narrative project of modernity…

Sex worker activism, feminist discourse and HIV in Bangladesh

PubMed Central

Sultana, Habiba

2015-01-01

This paper explores the relationship between sex worker activism and HIV-related discourse in Bangladesh, relating recent developments in activism to the influence of feminist thought. Following their eviction in 1991 from brothels from red light areas, Bangladeshi sex workers started a social movement, at just about the same time that programmes started to work with sex workers to reduce the transmission of HIV. This paper argues that both sex worker activism and HIV-prevention initiatives find impetus in feminist pro-sex-work perspectives, which place emphasis on individual and collective agency. However, by participating in these programmes, sex workers failed to contest the imagery of themselves as ‘vectors’ of HIV. In this way, they were unwittingly complicit in reproducing their identity as ‘polluting others’. Moreover, by focusing on individual behaviour and the agency of sex workers, HIV programmes ignored the fact that the ‘choices’ made by sex workers are influenced by a wide range of structural and discursive factors, including gender norms and notions of bodily purity, which in turn have implications for the construction of HIV-related risk. PMID:25588539

Men and talk about legal abortion in South Africa: equality, support and rights discourses undermining reproductive 'choice'.

PubMed

Macleod, Catriona Ida; Hansjee, Jateen

2013-01-01

Discursive constructions of abortion are embedded in the social and gendered power relations of a particular socio-historical space. As part of research on public discourses concerning abortion in South Africa where there has been a radical liberalisation of abortion legislation, we collected data from male group discussions about a vignette concerning abortion, and newspaper articles written by men about abortion. Our analysis revealed how discourses of equality, support and rights may be used by men to subtly undermine women's reproductive right to 'choose' an abortion. Within an Equal Partnership discourse, abortion, paired with the assumption of foetal personhood, was equated with violating an equal heterosexual partnership and a man's patriarchal duty to protect a child. A New Man discourse, which positions men as supportive of women, was paired with the assumption of men as rational and women as irrational in decision-making, to allow for the possibility of men dissuading women from terminating a pregnancy. A Rights discourse was invoked to suggest that abortion violates men's paternal rights.

Sex worker activism, feminist discourse and HIV in Bangladesh.

PubMed

Sultana, Habiba

2015-01-01

This paper explores the relationship between sex worker activism and HIV-related discourse in Bangladesh, relating recent developments in activism to the influence of feminist thought. Following their eviction in 1991 from brothels from red light areas, Bangladeshi sex workers started a social movement, at just about the same time that programmes started to work with sex workers to reduce the transmission of HIV. This paper argues that both sex worker activism and HIV-prevention initiatives find impetus in feminist pro-sex-work perspectives, which place emphasis on individual and collective agency. However, by participating in these programmes, sex workers failed to contest the imagery of themselves as 'vectors' of HIV. In this way, they were unwittingly complicit in reproducing their identity as 'polluting others'. Moreover, by focusing on individual behaviour and the agency of sex workers, HIV programmes ignored the fact that the 'choices' made by sex workers are influenced by a wide range of structural and discursive factors, including gender norms and notions of bodily purity, which in turn have implications for the construction of HIV-related risk.

Discursive geographies in science: space, identity, and scientific discourse among indigenous women in higher education

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brandt, Carol B.

2008-09-01

Despite completing undergraduate degrees in the life sciences, few Indigenous women choose to pursue careers in scientific research. To help us understand how American Indian students engage with science, this ethnographic research describes (1) how four Navajo women identified with science, and (2) the narratives they offered when we discussed their experiences with scientific discourse. Using intensive case studies to describe the experiences of these women, my research focused on their final year of undergraduate study in the life sciences at a university in southwestern US. I point to the processes by which the participants align themselves with ideas, practices, groups, or people in science. As each participant recounted her experiences with scientific discourse, they recreated for me a discursive geography of their lives on the reservation, at home, at community colleges (in some cases), and on the university campus. In the construction and analysis of the narratives for this research, mapping this geography was critical to understanding each participant's discursive relationship with science. In these discursive spaces, I observed productive "locations of possibility" in which students and their instructors: valued connected knowing; acknowledged each other's history, culture, and knowledge; began to speak to each other subject-to-subject; and challenged normative views of schooling. I argue that this space, as a location of possibility, has the power to transform the crushing impersonalized schooling that often characterizes "rigorous" scientific programs in a research institution.

Educational Technology: A Presupposition of Equality?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Orlando, Joanne

2014-01-01

The work of philosopher Jacques Rancière is used conceptually and methodologically to frame an exploration of the driving interests in educational technology policy and the sanctioning of particular discursive constructions of pedagogy that result. In line with Rancière's thinking, the starting point for this analysis is that of equality--that…

The Inevitability of "Standard" English: Discursive Constructions of Standard Language Ideologies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davila, Bethany

2016-01-01

Although standard language ideologies have been well researched and theorized, the practices that lead to the reproduction and enactment of these ideologies deserve attention. Specifically, there remains a need to study language that both reveals reliance on standard language ideologies and perpetuates these ideologies within the field of writing…

Autism, "Recovery (to Normalcy)," and the Politics of Hope

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Broderick, Alicia A.

2009-01-01

This article draws on the traditions of critical discourse analysis (N. Fairclough, 1995, 2001; M. Foucault, 1972, 1980; J. P. Gee, 1999) in critically examining the discursive formation of "recovery" from autism in applied behavioral analysis (ABA) discourse and its relationship to constructs of hope. Constituted principally in the work of O. I.…

Accountability in Family Discourse: Socialization into Norms and Standards and Negotiation of Responsibility in Italian Dinner Conversations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sterponi, Laura

2009-01-01

This article explores morality as situated activity and approaches the discursive practice of accountability in Italian family dinner conversations as an avenue for understanding the construction of moral behaviour in everyday interpersonal interaction. The article focuses in particular on "vicarious" accounts, namely accounts, or…

When Old and New Regionalism Collide: Deinstitutionalization of Regions and Resistance Identity in Municipality Amalgamations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zimmerbauer, Kaj; Paasi, Anssi

2013-01-01

Regions as well as their identities and borders are social and discursive constructs that are produced and removed in contested, historically contingent and context-bound processes of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization. This article studies the deinstitutionalization of regions in the context of municipality amalgamations and the…

Constructing Outsiders: The Discursive Framing of Access in University Diversity Policies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Iverson, Susan V.

2012-01-01

This article investigates how discourses circulating in diversity policies reflect and produce perceptions about diversity in higher education. This study, utilizing the method of policy discourse analysis, examines 21 diversity action plans issued at 20 U.S. land-grant universities to understand how these policy documents frame diversity.…

Politics and Pedagogy: Discursive Constructions in the IB "Theory of Knowledge--Guide"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Nigel V.; Morgan, Mandy

2010-01-01

The International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum is increasingly popular in both national and international secondary education settings. The "Theory of knowledge" (TOK) course is cast as the prime example of the international globalised values the IB Diploma represents. This article argues that such a positioning is contested within the TOK…

Coloniality and Education: Negotiating Discourses of Immigration in Schools and Communities through Border Thinking

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ghiso, Maria Paula; Campano, Gerald

2013-01-01

In this article, we examine the discursive construction of knowledge about immigration in two geographic spaces whose "border" many students navigate: a school context meant to support English Language Learners and an out-of-school faith based organization serving immigrant communities. We draw on the concept of "border…

Leadership, New Public Management and the Re-Modelling and Regulation of Teacher Identities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hall, David; Gunter, Helen; Bragg, Joanna

2013-01-01

This article examines the rapidly shifting relationship between teachers and the state and efforts to re-model teacher identities within the wider context of public sector modernization and the New Public Management. The construction and development of officially authorized and normative discursive practices relating to leadership and the…

Second Language Socialization in a Bilingual Chat Room: Global and Local Considerations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lam, Wan Shun Eva

2004-01-01

This paper considers how global practices of English on the Internet intersect with local practices of English in the territorial or national sphere in constructing the language experiences of immigrant learners. Using a multi-contextual approach to language socialization, this paper examines the social and discursive practices in a…

A Framework for Analyzing the Collaborative Construction of Arguments and Its Interplay with Agency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mueller, Mary; Yankelewitz, Dina; Maher, Carolyn

2012-01-01

In this report, we offer a framework for analyzing the ways in which collaboration influences learners' building of mathematical arguments and thus promotes mathematical understanding. Building on a previous model used to analyze discursive practices of students engaged in mathematical problem solving, we introduce three types of collaboration and…

The Formation of English Teacher Identities: A Cross-Cultural Investigation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gu, Mingyue; Benson, Phil

2015-01-01

Drawing on insights from Communities of Practice and critical discourse theory, this study investigates how teacher identities are discursively constructed in course of teacher education and under the influence of social structure. The participants were seven Hong Kong and nine mainland Chinese pre-service teachers. Two focus group interviews and…

White Space, White Privilege: Mapping Discursive Inquiry into the Self.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jackson, Ronald L., II

1999-01-01

Explores the role of communication in the strategic self-definition of "whiteness." Uses transcripts from two focus group interviews (with Whites from two historically Black universities) to map the discourses of "White" participants concerning the nature of "whiteness." Implies that the space Whites occupy is not clearly constructed and defined…

Thinking Interculturally: Decolonizing History and Citizenship Education in Québec

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DesRoches, Sarah J.

2016-01-01

The main objective of this article is to offer an alternative discursive framework for teaching history and citizenship education in Québec, Canada. Enabling a more inclusive discussion around how citizenship is constructed, thinking interculturally allows us begin thinking about practical ways in which citizenship and history education might…

"Free Yourself, Sister!": Teacher Identity, Subjection, and the Psyche

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Janzen, Melanie D.

2015-01-01

Teachers are caught in a tug of war between what they are supposed to be and who they are trying to become. The teaching subject, striving to be recognisable, is socially constructed and discursively constituted through ongoing relations with power--an identity essentially determined in advance. What is it to live--to become, as…

Working the Senate from the Outside In: The Mediated Construction of a Feminist Political Campaign.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vavrus, Mary

1998-01-01

Contributes to scholarship on rhetorical criticism, political science, and feminism by examining one aspect of the 1992 campaign year known as the "Year of the Woman." Discusses how the mass-mediated discursive formation positioned five female Senate candidates outside of perceived mainstream cultural beliefs. Investigates ways the…

Professional Bandwagons and Local Discursive Effects: Reporting the Literate Student.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Comber, Barbara

Despite the considerable attention given to literacy assessment, there has been very little examination of one of the most common assessment and reporting practices; namely, the teacher written report card. What kinds of literate subjects are constructed in teachers' written assessments of students and what are the effects for different students?…

Identity Construction in Complex Second Language Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hirst, Elizabeth

2007-01-01

In this study of an Indonesian language class in Australia, I propose that students are agentive in adopting, rejecting and deploying discursive positions within the classroom. There are a range of identities made available in the classroom, only some of which are taken up and privileged within specific moments in the classroom. I apply the…

Discursive Leadership and Conceptual Fluency in Non-Native English Speakers' Online Task-Based Dialogues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boz, Umit

2014-01-01

Much research has examined how different patterns of social interaction shape language learners' interactional roles (e.g., collaborative, dominant, passive) in peer-to-peer conversations. However, little or no research has investigated the co-construction of such roles in multiparty, online task-based dialogues within the framework of discursive…

Envisaging Agency as Discourse Hybridity: A Butlerian Analysis of Secondary Classroom Discourses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Charteris, Jennifer

2016-01-01

Conceptualised from a range of sociological perspectives, and theorised extensively over the last 50 years, human agency is an integral element to lifelong learning. Poststructural theory with its decentred discursive construction of the learner offers a vibrant conception of classroom dynamics. This paper envisions how learner agency can be…

Reproducing Monocultural Education: Ethnic Majority Staff's Discursive Constructions of Monocultural School Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mampaey, Jelle; Zanoni, Patrizia

2016-01-01

This paper investigates the role of ethnic majority staff in the perpetuation of monocultural education that excludes non-western, ethnic minority cultures and reproduces institutional racism in schools. Based on qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews in four ethnically diverse schools in the Flemish educational system, we…

"It's Not Fair": Policy Discourses and Students' Understandings of Plagiarism in a New Zealand University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adam, Lee; Anderson, Vivienne; Spronken-Smith, Rachel

2017-01-01

Plagiarism is a concept that is difficult to define. Although most higher education institutions have policies aimed at minimising and addressing student plagiarism, little research has examined the ways in which plagiarism is discursively constructed in university policy documents, or the connections and disconnections between institutional and…

Englishisation at a Global Space: Students and Staff Making Sense of Language Choices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin-Rubió, Xavier; Cots, Josep Maria

2016-01-01

This study starts from the premise that academic mobility contributes to the development of students' plurilingual identities and that study abroad contexts aiming at becoming global spaces are particularly interesting sites to explore the individuals' discursive work to (re-)construct their plurilingual identities by reconciling their language…

Supporting pre-service elementary teachers in their understanding of inquiry teaching through the construction of a third discursive space

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Greca, Ileana M.

2016-03-01

Several international reports promote the use of the inquiry teaching methodology for improvements in science education at elementary school. Nevertheless, research indicates that pre-service elementary teachers have insufficient experience with this methodology and when they try to implement it, the theory they learnt in their university education clashes with the classroom practice they observe, a problem that has also been noted with other innovative methodologies. So, it appears essential for pre-service teachers to conduct supportive reflective practice during their education to integrate theory and practice, which various studies suggest is not usually done. Our study shows how opening up a third discursive space can assist this supportive reflective practice. The third discursive space appears when pre-service teachers are involved in specific activities that allow them to contrast the discourses of theoretical knowledge taught at university with practical knowledge arising from their ideas on science and science teaching and their observations during classroom practice. The case study of three pre-service teachers shows that this strategy was fundamental in helping them to integrate theory and practice, resulting in a better understanding of the inquiry methodology and its application in the classroom.

Untroubling abortion: A discourse analysis of women’s accounts

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

In this paper, I highlight key differences between a discourse analytic approach to women’s accounts of abortion and that taken by the growing body of research that seeks to explore and measure women’s experiences of abortion stigma. Drawing on critical analyses of the conceptualisation of stigma in other fields of healthcare, I suggest that research on abortion stigma often risks reifying it by failing to consider how identities are continually re-negotiated through language-use. In contrast, by attending to language as a form of social action, discursive psychology makes it possible to emphasise speakers’ capacity to construct “untroubled” (i.e. non-stigmatised) identities, while acknowledging that this process is constrained by the contexts in which talk takes place. My analysis applies these insights to interviews with women concerning their experiences of having an abortion in England. I highlight three forms of discursive work through which women navigate “trouble” in their accounts of abortion, and critically consider the resources available for meaning-making within this particular context of talk. In doing so, I aim to provoke reflection about the discursive frameworks through which women’s accounts of abortion are solicited and explored. PMID:28546656

Family Life and Alcohol Consumption: The Transmission of "Public" and "Private" Drinking Cultures

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jayne, Mark; Valentine, Gill; Gould, Myles

2012-01-01

This article considers the transmission of drinking cultures within families. In particular, we highlight the differential and discursive construction of the home as a space where parents/carers are happy to introduce children to alcohol in a "safe" environment in opposition to public spaces which they consider to be locations where…

Adult Graduates' Negotiations of Age(ing) and Employability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Siivonen, Päivi; Isopahkala-Bouret, Ulpukka

2016-01-01

In this article, we will explore Finnish adult graduates' social positioning in relation to age and ageing, and the new discursive framing of employability that is firmly expressed in national as well as in European policy agendas. Age is here understood as a social construction and ageing as a lifelong process. We will analyse our joint interview…

Students Engaging in Diversity: Blogging to Learn the History of Jazz

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stewart, Anissa Ryan; Reid, Jacqueline Marie; Stewart, Jeffrey C.

2014-01-01

This study examined discursive choices made by the instructor of a Black Studies course in constructing what counted as blogging and the history of jazz; how students showed evidence of meeting the course requirements, and how particular students engaged with issues of race and diversity in their blogs. The instructor required blogging to enable…

The Discursive Construction of Superintendent Statesmanship on Twitter

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hurst, Todd M.

2017-01-01

The modern school superintendent fulfills a unique role in the U.S. public education system. He or she is structurally empowered as the de facto head of the local educational system, thereby granted with a certain amount of trust and authority regarding educational issues. At the same time, the superintendent is, in most cases, an employee of a…

English Language Arts and the Economy: Discursive Constructions of Two Fields

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Collin, Ross

2018-01-01

This article presents discourse analyses of two teachers' statements about the economic payoff of studying English in the United States' high schools. Specifically, the article examines how English teachers construe reading as an economic asset that can be developed in schools and used on the job. Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of field and capital…

Xeno-Racism and Discursive Construction of "Us" vs. "Them": Cosa Nostra, Wall Street, and Immigrants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Catalano, Theresa

2011-01-01

In this dissertation, the denaturalization of migrants in the US and Italy as represented in newspaper crime reports was identified and compared to the opposing naturalization of Italian crime organizations in Italy and Wall Street/corporate criminals in the US. This was accomplished through careful, multidisciplinary, scientific analysis of over…

Constructions of Early Childhood Education and Care Provision: Negotiating Discourses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Campbell-Barr, Verity

2014-01-01

Drives to increase the number of early childhood education and care places in England have relied on a mixed economy of providers. Yet this is not a free market as policy makers have sought to create a discursive truth of an entrepreneurial provider in order to secure their initial pump priming investment. However, there remain sustainability…

New and Not so New Horizons: Brief Encounters between UK Undergraduate Native-Speaker and Non-Native-Speaker Englishes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henderson, Juliet

2011-01-01

This paper explores the apparent contradiction between the valuing and promoting of diverse literacies in most UK HEIs, and the discursive construction of spoken native-speaker English as the medium of good grades and prestige academic knowledge. During group interviews on their experiences of university internationalisation, 38 undergraduate…

Supporting Pre-Service Elementary Teachers in Their Understanding of Inquiry Teaching through the Construction of a Third Discursive Space

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Greca, Ileana M.

2016-01-01

Several international reports promote the use of the inquiry teaching methodology for improvements in science education at elementary school. Nevertheless, research indicates that pre-service elementary teachers have insufficient experience with this methodology and when they try to implement it, the theory they learnt in their university…

Co-Constructing Representations of Culture in ESL and EFL Classrooms: Discursive Faultlines in Chile and California

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Menard-Warwick, Julia

2009-01-01

Based on qualitative research conducted in 3 university English as a foreign language classrooms in Chile and 3 community college English as a second language classrooms in California, this article examines the approaches used in teaching culture in these classrooms, the differences in how particular cultures (usually national cultures) were…

Insights into Contextualised Learning: How Do Professional Examiners Construct Shared Understanding through Feedback?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Martin

2014-01-01

This project uses the community of practice metaphor to explore some of the discursive characteristics of learning that take place when a group of United Kingdom-based professional examiners engage in joint-work activity in both face-to-face and remote computer-mediated communication contexts. Professional examiners are all subject experts, and…

Bourdieu and the Social Space of the PE Class: Reproduction of Doxa through Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hunter, Lisa

2004-01-01

This paper considers the social space of one physical education (PE) class in the middle years of schooling. I endeavour to tease out the dialectic between the discursive spaces available to the students positioned within this space and the construction and negotiation of student subjectivities. Using the conceptual tools of field, habitus,…

Classroom Discourse in College English Teaching of China: A Pedagogic or Natural Mode?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pei, Zhengwei

2015-01-01

The study reported in this article aims to capture the possible changes to the discursive mode of College English (CE) teaching in China by comparing teachers' questions, feedback, and teaching exchanges across two levels of quality courses constructed at different years. Based on transcribed data of 20 videos, it reveals that the general…

Emergence of Young Children's Presentational Self in Daily Conversation and Its Semiotic Foundation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Komatsu, Koji

2010-01-01

In this article, I take a relational and discursive perspective on young children's self observed in daily natural conversations, and consider the process of semiotic mediation in the observer's recognition. Based on the ideas of co-construction of relationships and identities in conversation, and using excerpts of dialogues between a young child…

Higher Education and the Discursive Construction of American National Identity, 1946-2013

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Palmadessa, Allison L.

2014-01-01

American institutions of higher education have served as a beacon of American idealism and identity since the foundation of the earliest universities. As the nation developed, higher education matured and continued to maintain a position of importance in the future of the nation. While the university has perpetuated a national cultural identity,…

The Discursive Construction of (A)Moral Names: Religion versus Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haque, Muhammed Shahriar; Abedin, Zainul

2011-01-01

Bangla, as spoken in Bangladesh, is inseparable from the nation itself. The language movement of 1952, where several people died, played a significant role in the independence and the birth of Bangladesh. In fact, on 17th November 1999, UNESCO immortalized the movement by proclaiming 21st February as the International Mother Language Day. Bangla,…

Constructions of Taiwanese/Chinese Asian American Women Teacher Identities: A Complicated and Complicating Auto/Biographical Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Tan-ching

2009-01-01

Conducted as an auto/biographical and narrative qualitative research study, this dissertation traces the researcher's winding journey in search of her teacher identities, whose cultural and discursive meanings are always changing. There are two subjects in this study--the researcher's colleague as her research participant and the researcher…

Beyond Antagonism? The Discursive Construction of "New" Teachers in the United Arab Emirates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clarke, Matthew

2006-01-01

The UAE, which celebrated independence in 1971, is a rapidly changing environment where aspects of traditional Bedouin culture co-exist with the immense changes being wrought by the forces of globalization and the wealth brought about by the development of the oil industry. Emirati nationals are a minority within the UAE, comprising approximately…

"Elections" or "Selections"? Blogging and Twittering the Nigerian 2007 General Elections

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ifukor, Presley

2010-01-01

This article examines the linguistic construction of textual messages in the use of blogs and Twitter in the Nigerian 2007 electoral cycle comprising the April 2007 general elections and rerun elections in April, May, and August 2009. A qualitative approach of discourse analysis is used to present a variety of discursive acts that blogging and…

Monumentalizing Disaster and Wreak-Construction: A Case Study of Haiti to Rethink the Privatization of Public Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atasay, Engin; Delavan, Garrett

2012-01-01

This paper is a theoretical effort to support but complicate critiques of disaster capitalism and neoliberal strategies to profit from public education. We put into conversation a discursive analysis following Michel Foucault and a spatial analysis following Henri Lefebvre that focus on monumentalized disasters. We argue that neoliberalism carries…

Discursive constructions of professional identity in policy and regulatory discourse.

PubMed

Fealy, Gerard; Hegarty, Josephine-Mary; McNamara, Martin; Casey, Mary; O'Leary, Denise; Kennedy, Catriona; O'Reilly, Pauline; O'Connell, Rhona; Brady, Anne-Marie; Nicholson, Emma

2018-05-23

To examine and describe disciplinary discourses conducted through professional policy and regulatory documents in nursing and midwifery in Ireland. A key tenet of discourse theory is that group identities are constructed in public discourses and these discursively-constructed identities become social realities. Professional identities can be extracted from both the explicit and latent content of discourse. Studies of nursing's disciplinary discourse have drawn attention to a dominant discourse that confers nursing with particular identities, which privilege the relational and affective aspects of nursing and in the process, marginalise scientific knowledge and the technical and body work of nursing. We used critical discourse analysis to analyse a purposive sample of nursing and midwifery regulatory and policy documents. We applied a four-part, sequential approach to analysing the selected texts. This involved identifying key words, phrases and statements that indicated dominant discourses that, in turn, revealed latent beliefs and assumptions. The focus of our analysis was on how the discourses construct professional identities. Our analysis indicated recurring narratives that appeared to confer nurses and midwives with three dominant identities: 'the knowledgeable practitioner', the 'interpersonal practitioner' and the 'accountable practitioner'. The discourse also carried assumptions about the form and content of disciplinary knowledge. Academic study of identity construction in discourse is important to disciplinary development by raising nurses' and midwives' consciousness, alerting them to the ways that their own discourse can shape their identities, influence public and political opinion and, in the process, shape public policy on their professions. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

'You become a man in a man's world': is there discursive space for women in surgery?

PubMed

Hill, Elspeth; Solomon, Yvette; Dornan, Tim; Stalmeijer, Renée

2015-12-01

The UK set a target of 20% of the surgical consultant workforce to be represented by women by 2009; in 2012, it remains 7%. Studies have attributed this shortfall to the nature of careers in surgery and differing career aspirations among women. Rather than exploring barriers to participation, this study aims to explore the self-narratives of those women who do undertake surgical careers and who do come to see themselves as surgeons. The study comprises 15 individual interviews with women in surgical careers, from those aspiring to be surgeons, to senior and retired surgeons. Data were explored using discourse analysis with a priori themes derived from the literature on women in surgery and Holland et al.'s theoretical framework of Figured Worlds. Discourses of being a surgeon and discourses of being a woman, existed in competition. Female surgeons figured surgery as a career requiring 100% dedication, as they did motherhood, although the demands of the two roles differed and consequently the roles were not discursively compatible. Many related powerfully negative experiences in which their gender had marked them out as 'other' within surgery. Women described how they were expected to show masculine traits as surgeons and the ways to consequently become legitimate in the surgical world as a 'woman surgeon'. They found creative ways to articulate how women in general, and feminine qualities in particular, enhanced surgery. Finally, some women engaged in identity work, termed 'world making', - the creative orchestration of discourses of surgeonhood and motherhood to be mutually sustaining. There is little discursive space in which to be both a successful woman and a successful surgeon. Those who combine these roles must either be innovative in refiguring what it means to be a woman or what it means to be a surgeon, or they must author a new space for themselves, a powerful discursive process termed 'world making'. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

"Learning Science Is About Facts and Language Learning Is About Being Discursive"-An Empirical Investigation of Students' Disciplinary Beliefs in the Context of Argumentation.

PubMed

Heitmann, Patricia; Hecht, Martin; Scherer, Ronny; Schwanewedel, Julia

2017-01-01

Argumentation is considered crucial in numerous disciplines in schools and universities because it constitutes an important proficiency in peoples' daily and professional lives. However, it is unclear whether argumentation is understood and practiced in comparable ways across disciplines. This study consequently examined empirically how students perceive argumentation in science and (first) language lessons. Specifically, we investigated students' beliefs about the relevance of discourse and the role of facts . Data from 3,258 high school students from 85 German secondary schools were analyzed with multigroup multilevel structural equation modeling in order to disentangle whether or not differences in argumentation across disciplines exist and the extent to which variation in students' beliefs can be explained by gender and school track. Results showed that students perceived the role of facts as highly relevant for science lessons, whereas discursive characteristics were considered significantly less important. In turn, discourse played a central role in language lessons, which was believed to require less knowledge of facts . These differences were independent of students' gender. In contrast, school track predicted the differences in beliefs significantly. Our findings lend evidence on the existence of disciplinary school cultures in argumentation that may be the result of differences in teachers' school-track-specific classroom practice and education. Implications in terms of a teacher's role in establishing norms for scientific argumentation as well as the impact of students' beliefs on their learning outcomes are discussed.

Gender performativity in physics: affordances or only constraints?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Danielsson, Anna T.; Lundin, Mattias

2014-06-01

In this forum we engage in a dialogue with Allison Gonsalves's paper `"Physics and the girly girl—there is a contradiction somewhere": Doctoral students' positioning around discourses of gender and competence in physics'. In her paper Gonsalves uses a sociocultural approach to examine women doctoral students' stories about becoming physicists. In doing so her paper focuses on how discourses of masculinity and femininity can create available and unavailable positions for the women students. In this dialogue we do a parallel reading of two of the student narratives presented by Gonsalves, using Judith Butler's (1990) concept of discursive agency as a means to more explicitly bring the affordances for women identity constitution offered by their localized physicist context to the fore, rather focusing on its, often more visible, constraints.

Reopening the dialogue between the theory of social representations and discursive psychology for examining the construction and transformation of meaning in discourse and communication.

PubMed

Batel, Susana; Castro, Paula

2018-06-28

The theory of social representations (TSR) and discursive psychology (DP) originated as different social psychological approaches and have at times been presented as incompatible. However, along the years convergence has also been acknowledged, and, lately, most of all, practised. With this paper, we discuss how versions of TSR focusing on self-other relations for examining cultural meaning systems in/through communication, and versions of DP focusing on discourse at cultural, ideological, and interactional levels, can come together. The goal is to help forge a stronger social-psychological exploration of how meaning is constructed and transformed in and through language, discourse, and communication, thus extending current understanding of social change. After presenting a theoretical proposal for integrating those versions of TSR and DP, we offer also an integrated analytical strategy. We suggest that together these proposals can, on one hand, help TSR systematize analyses of social change that are both more critical and better grounded in theorizations of language use, and, on the other, provide DP with analytical tools able to better examine both the relational contexts where the construction and transformation of meaning are performed and their effects on discourse. Finally, we give some illustrations of the use of this analytical strategy. © 2018 The British Psychological Society.

Confessions of the flesh and biopedagogies: discursive constructions of obesity on Nip/Tuck.

PubMed

Rail, G; Lafrance, M

2009-12-01

Informed by the work of Michel Foucault, the authors discuss the Nip/Tuck episode entitled "Momma Boone" and how it discursively constructs "obesity". They show how this popular media text can be understood as a crystallisation of the dominant discourse surrounding fat bodies. In the process, how the episode can be seen as a "biopedagogy" that instructs its viewers in how to think and feel about the fat body is examined. Foucault's formulation of the confessional is seen to be useful to theorise the ways in which biopedagogy leads subjects to believe and ultimately take part in processes leading to salvation. It is argued that in this Nip/Tuck episode, biopedagogy functions in and through Momma Boone's "confessions of the flesh", that is, confessions aimed at revealing her obese body so that it can be rescued, rehabilitated and saved. Momma Boone's salvation is shown to require three stages: first, the "confession" of obesity; second, the conversion to the "truth" of the "dominant obesity discourse"; and third, the codification of a "new life" for the obese subject. In the end, it is argued that since it is represented as abject, monstrous and out of control, Momma Boone's body is made to inspire fear and panic in so far as it provides constructed "evidence" regarding the consequences of the obese subject's failure to convert to the truth of obesity discourse.

"Like the Fish Not in Water": How Language and Race Mediate the Social and Economic Inclusion of Women Migrants to Australia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Butorac, Donna

2014-01-01

Learning English is an important aspect of post-migration settlement in Australia, and new migrants with beginner to intermediate proficiency are strongly encouraged to attend government-subsidised English language classes. Underpinning the framing and delivery of these classes is a commitment to the discursive construction of Australia as an…

Voice, Identity, and the Organizing of Student Experience: Managing Pedagogical Dilemmas in Critical Classroom Discussions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yannuzzi, Thomas J.; Martin, Daniela

2014-01-01

The current paper explores the discursive complexities of teaching and learning in inclusive, critically oriented classrooms. It argues that to accomplish the ontological goals of higher learning, we need to focus on the construction of student voice, or the ability to be considered in and have influence on teaching and learning. The paper further…

Local Resignifications of Transnational Discourses in Intercultural Higher Education: The Case of the "Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural" in Mexico

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mateos Cortés, Laura Selene; Dietz, Gunther

2017-01-01

Our main objective is to analyze the different ways in which people involved in the Mexican intercultural education subsystem conceive interculturality. This subsystem is still emerging and we refer to the specific case of Veracruz. We point out the discursive elements implied in the construction of definitions as well as the linguistic screens…

"Before I Didn't Understand Anything about White People, but Now, I Speak English": Negotiating Globally Mediated Discourses of Race, Language, and Nation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ullman, Char

2012-01-01

This article explores the ways in which Mexican transmigrants in the USA discursively construct national identities in relation to the mediated message of a television advertisement for an English-language self-study program marketed to Spanish speakers, called "Ingles Sin Barreras." Using narrative analysis of the advertisement and…

Deviance as history: the future of perversion.

PubMed

Simon, W

1994-02-01

An approach to the social construction of concepts of sexual deviance and sexual perversions is considered. Deviance is conceptualized as a problem of control, perversion a problem of desire. These are seen as related to the larger sexual and nonsexual discursive practices of society and given to change as these contextualizing practices change. Changing conceptions regarding masturbation, homosexuality, pedophilia, and sadomasochism are examined.

Cross-Border Pre-Service Teachers in Hong Kong: "To Be or Not to Be Integrated, that Is the Problem"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gu, Michelle Mingyue

2011-01-01

This study uses discourse theory to explore the teaching identities of a group of mainland Chinese pre-service teachers of English in a teacher education institute in Hong Kong. Exploring how the teaching identities are discursively constructed, the study reaches two conclusions. First, that the pre-service teachers negotiate their own positions…

Constructing Roma Students as Ethnic 'Others' through Orientalist Discourses in Bulgarian Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lambrev, Veselina; Traykov, Bozhin; Kirova, Anna

2018-01-01

This article uses the case of Bulgarian, predominantly Roma, schools to illustrate the long history of stereotypes about Roma people dating back to modernity's discursive binary oppositions of 'civilized' vs. 'barbarians.' The data from a longitudinal study with 12 Bulgarian educators showed the modes by which Roma as the Other is created in the…

Teen Driving as Public Drama: Statistics, Risk, and the Social Construction of Youth as a Public Problem

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Best, Amy L.

2008-01-01

In popular and policy framings in the USA, traffic accidents and fatalities involving teens are typically treated as having their own facticity. Much like other social phenomenon, teen driving accidents are regarded as though they are part of an objective reality external to a set of ideational or discursive processes and social organization of…

School Leaders' and Teachers' Work with National Test Results: Lost in Translation?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gunnulfsen, Ann Elisabeth

2017-01-01

Studies have shown that school leaders are important in work with large-scale policy reforms in schools. However, the issue of how school leaders and teachers discuss and enact policy is under-studied. This article explores the discursive processes in school leaders' and teachers' policy enactment as they construct responses to policy. The data…

From Divergent Evolution to Witting Cross-Fertilisation: The Need for More Awareness of Potential Inter-Discursive Communication Regarding Students' Extended Historical Writing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carroll, James Edward

2017-01-01

History education stakeholders in England have consistently judged that some students find formal historical writing prohibitively difficult due to the demands of constructing an extended argument. While policy makers have agreed students need support in their historical writing, recurring themes in centralised resourcing have been wastage,…

Complicating Culture and Difference: Situating Asian American Youth Identities in Lisa Yee's "Millicent Min," "Girl Genius" and "Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Endo, Rachel

2009-01-01

This review situates how culture, difference, and identity are discursively constructed in "Millicent Min, Girl Genius" and "Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time," two award-winning books written by critically acclaimed Asian American author Lisa Yee. Using contextual literacy approaches, the characters, cultural motifs, and physical settings in these…

Breaking down "Healthism": Barriers to Health and Fitness as Identified by Immigrant Youth in St. John's, NL, Canada

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shea, Jennifer M.; Beausoleil, Natalie

2012-01-01

In this article, we challenge dominant health and fitness discourses which stress individual responsibility in the attainment of these statuses. We examine the results of an empirical study exploring how a group of 15 Canadian immigrant youth, aged 12-17, discursively construct notions of health and fitness. Qualitative data were collected through…

Massive Open Online Change? Exploring the Discursive Construction of the "MOOC" in Newspapers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Selwyn, Neil; Bulfin, Scott; Pangrazio, Luci

2015-01-01

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been a prominent topic of recent educational discussion and debate. MOOCs are, in essence, university-affiliated courses offered to large groups of online learners for little or no cost and are seen by many as a bellwether for change and reform across higher education systems. This study uses content and…

From One "I" to Another: Discursive Construction of Self-Representation in English and Castilian Spanish Research Articles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sheldon, Elena

2009-01-01

The notion that academic writing is not only a conventional entity but also carries the representation of the writer has been supported by several researchers. Few studies have explored identity representation in language across two written cultures, such as English and Spanish, although Spanish might be a language of interest for non-native…

The Discursive Construction of Identity: An Analysis of Positioning in the Conversational Narratives of Japanese Preservice Teachers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rugen, Brian David

2009-01-01

Contemporary research suggests that forming a professional identity is crucial to the process of becoming a teacher. Furthermore, a "narrative turn" has emerged as a major methodological influence for the study of identity in research on teaching. A guiding assumption of traditional narrative research is that stories act as…

Promoting Girls' Participation in Sports: Discursive Constructions of Girls in a Sports Initiative

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Svender, Jenny; Larsson, Hakan; Redelius, Karin

2012-01-01

What does it mean to promote girls' participation in sports and which girls are seen as needing support? In this article we focus a government-financed sports venture and scrutinize the frames governing what is possible to say about girls and their participation in sports. By analyzing project applications from local sport clubs we investigate how…

Romantic Agrarianism and Movement Education in the United States: Examining the Discursive Politics of Learning Disability Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Danforth, Scot

2011-01-01

The learning disability construct gained scientific and political legitimacy in the United States in the 1960s as an explanation for some forms of childhood learning difficulties. In 1975, federal law incorporated learning disability into the categorical system of special education. The historical and scientific roots of the disorder involved a…

Portrait of a science teacher as a bricoleur: A case study from India

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sharma, Ajay

2008-12-01

This paper presents a case study of science teaching in an eighth grade school classroom in India. It comes out of a larger ethnographic study done in 2005 that looked at how science was taught and learned in a rural government run middle school in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India. Subscribing to a sociocultural perspective, the paper presents a narrative account of how a science teacher negotiated and made use of the existing discourses that influenced his teaching practice to construct learning experiences for his students. It is a portrait of him as a bricoleur, engaged in making-do with what is of available to conform to prescriptive discursive norms as well as engage in situated, contingent and collaborative pedagogical improvisations with his students. Through a discursive analysis of Mr. Raghuvanshi's teaching practice, this paper presents his bricolage as a feature of everyday sociocultural practices, and as an instance of glocalization of decontextualized school science discourse. It also offers a case for creation and strengthening of material conditions that support enactment of teacher agency for construction of meaningful and relevant learning experiences for students. [InlineMediaObject not available: see fulltext.][InlineMediaObject not available: see fulltext.

The stigmatisation of abortion: a qualitative analysis of print media in Great Britain in 2010

PubMed Central

Purcell, Carrie; Hilton, Shona; McDaid, Lisa

2014-01-01

The media play a significant part in shaping public perceptions of health issues, and abortion attracts continued media interest. Detailed examination of media constructions of abortion may help to identify emerging public discourse. Qualitative content analysis was used to examine if and how the print media in contributes to the stigmatisation of abortion. Articles from seven British and five Scottish national newspapers from 2010 were analysed for overall framings of abortion and emergent themes, including potentially stigmatising discursive constructs and language. Abortion was found to be presented using predominantly negative language and discursive associations as ‘risky’, and in association with other ‘discredited’ social practices. Key perspectives were found to be absent or marginalised, including those of women who have sought abortion. Few articles framed abortion as a positive and legitimate choice. Negative media representations of abortion contribute to the stigmatisation of the procedure and of women who have it, and reflect a discrediting of women's reproductive decision-making. There is a need to challenge the notion that abortion stigma is inevitable, and to encourage positive framings of abortion in the media and other public discourse. PMID:25115952

Risky Bodies in the Plasma Bioeconomy

PubMed Central

Farrell, Anne-Maree

2015-01-01

In 2003 the UK National Blood Service introduced a policy of ‘male donor preference’ which involved women’s plasma being discarded following blood collection. The policy was based on the view that data relating to the incidence of Transfusion-Related Acute Lung Injury (TRALI) was linked to transfusion with women’s plasma. While appearing to treat female donors as equal to male donors, exclusion criteria operate after donation at the stage of processing blood, thus perpetuating myths of universality even though only certain ‘extractions’ from women are retained for use in transfusion. Many women in the UK receive a plasma-derived product called Anti-D immunoglobulin which is manufactured from pooled male plasma. This article examines ways in which gender has significance for understanding blood relations, and how the blood economy is gendered. In our study of relations between blood donors and recipients, we explore how gendered bodies are produced through the discursive and material practices within blood services. We examine both how donation policies and the manufacturing and use of blood products produces gendered blood relations. PMID:26097401

Working through resistance in engaging boys and men towards gender equality and progressive masculinities

PubMed Central

Ratele, Kopano

2015-01-01

Over the last two decades, a focus on challenging and transforming dominant forms of masculinity and engaging boys and men towards gender equality and healthy masculinities has permeated South African social and health sciences and the humanities. This focus on men and boys has also been evident in intervention and activist work. However, the turn to boys, men and masculinities has not gone without resistance, contestation and contradictions. A range of localised and global realities has frustrated much of the enthusiasm for rapid, sweeping and concrete changes regarding gender justice and the making of progressive masculinities. Among the discursive and material forces that oppose work that engages boys and men are those to do with income-related issues, race and racism, cultural traditions and gender itself. Because of this, it is contended that engagement with boys and men needs to consider not only gender but also economic inequality, poverty and unemployment, divisions created by race, and struggles around tradition. This paper discusses these forces that undermine and counteract work with boys and men and how we might work through resistance in engaging with men and boys. PMID:26073936

Working through resistance in engaging boys and men towards gender equality and progressive masculinities.

PubMed

Ratele, Kopano

2015-01-01

Over the last two decades, a focus on challenging and transforming dominant forms of masculinity and engaging boys and men towards gender equality and healthy masculinities has permeated South African social and health sciences and the humanities. This focus on men and boys has also been evident in intervention and activist work. However, the turn to boys, men and masculinities has not gone without resistance, contestation and contradictions. A range of localised and global realities has frustrated much of the enthusiasm for rapid, sweeping and concrete changes regarding gender justice and the making of progressive masculinities. Among the discursive and material forces that oppose work that engages boys and men are those to do with income-related issues, race and racism, cultural traditions and gender itself. Because of this, it is contended that engagement with boys and men needs to consider not only gender but also economic inequality, poverty and unemployment, divisions created by race, and struggles around tradition. This paper discusses these forces that undermine and counteract work with boys and men and how we might work through resistance in engaging with men and boys.

'Taking charge of your health': discourses of responsibility in English-Canadian women's magazines.

PubMed

Roy, Stephannie C

2008-04-01

This article presents an examination of the ways in which responsibility for health is constructed in popular English-Canadian women's magazines. Women's magazines are a unique media form, acting as guidebooks for women on matters relating to feminine gender roles and are important to examine as part of the corpus of societal discourses which frame our understandings of what it means to be healthy and how good health is achieved. Using discourse analysis several techniques were found which reinforce women's individual responsibility to create and maintain good health for themselves and their families. The magazines instruct women/readers directly about their health-related responsibilities and outline the negative consequences of inaction or incorrect action. The magazines also use the traditional discursive technique of women's personal accounts as both cautionary tales and inspirational stories to encourage readers to actively pursue healthy behaviours. Reflecting and reinforcing the discourse of healthism, women's magazines consistently present health as an important individual responsibility and a moral imperative which creates an entrepreneurial subject position for women. The article concludes by discussing the implications for women's magazine audiences within the ongoing feminist debate about this cultural industry.

Construction of suicidal ideation in medical records.

PubMed

Galasiński, Dariusz; Ziółkowska, Justyna

2017-09-01

In this article, the authors are interested in exploring discursive transformation of patients' stories of suicidal ideation into medical discourses. In other words, they focus on how the narrated experience of suicidal thoughts made during the psychiatric assessment interview is recorded in the patients' medical record. The authors' data come from recordings of psychiatric interviews, as well as the doctors' notes in the medical records made after the interviews, collected in psychiatric hospitals in Poland. Assuming a constructionist view of discourse, they demonstrate that lived experience of suicide ideation resulting in stories of a complex and homogeneous group of "thoughts" is reduced to brief statements of fact of presence/existence. Exploration of the relationship between the interviews and the notes suggest a stark imposition of the medical gaze upon them. The authors end with arguments that discursive practices relegating lived experience from the focus of clinical practice deprives it of information which is meaningful and clinically significant.

Mobilizing support for the extreme right: a discursive analysis of minority leadership.

PubMed

Rooyackers, Ilse N; Verkuyten, Maykel

2012-03-01

This study uses a tripolar model of minority influence to investigate social category constructions of extreme right politicians. The analysis focuses on Geert Wilders, leader of the extreme right Party For Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands. It is examined how this popular politician construes the interdependent relations between himself, the population, and mainstream politicians, and discursively manages his controversial standpoints and proposals. Four parliamentary debates are analysed. The analysis shows that by defining national identity, Wilders invokes a self-image as a prototypical member of the population. Furthermore, and in contrast to other politicians, Wilders works up a self-image of a responsible and realistic politician who is group oriented. In addition, the analysis suggests that being a minority can be of strategic political value and therefore a position to foster. The relevance of the analysis for social psychological approaches to leadership and political minorities is discussed. © 2011 The British Psychological Society.

Accounting for Success and Failure: A Discursive Psychological Approach to Sport Talk

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Locke, Abigail

2004-01-01

In recent years, constructionist methodologies such as discursive psychology (Edwards & Potter, 1992) have begun to be used in sport research. This paper provides a practical guide to applying a discursive psychological approach to sport data. It discusses the assumptions and principles of discursive psychology and outlines the stages of a…

Creating Catch 22: Zooming in and Zooming out on the Discursive Constructions of Teachers in a News Article

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Keogh, Jayne; Garrick, Barbara

2011-01-01

The media regularly present negative news articles about teachers and teaching. This paper focuses particularly on one such news article. Using reflective analytic practices, first we zoom in to conduct a detailed analysis of the text. We find that complex and contradictory moral categories of teachers are assembled within and through the text. We…

Constructing and Contesting Discourses of Heteronormativity: An Ethnographic Study of Youth in a Francophone High School in Canada

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dalley, Phyllis; Campbell, Mark David

2006-01-01

This article explores the possibilities and impossibilities of establishing queer discursive spaces within a minority-language high school. Data examined here are from a three-year study of language and identity in a Francophone high school in Ontario, Canada. As two members of the larger research team, we draw on our close observations of teenage…

The Discursive Construction and (Ab)uses of a "German Childhood" in Primers during the Time of National Socialism 1933-1945

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heinze, Carsten

2012-01-01

Recent studies on primers from the time of the Third Reich in Germany show surprisingly little evidence of ideologisation. In comparison with other textbooks, national socialist contents were found to be present to a very limited degree. Rather than presenting the ideology, the books encouraged identification of the children with the presented…

What Is Best for the Child? Early Childhood Education and Care for Children under 3 Years of Age in Brazil and in Finland

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rutanen, Niina; de Souza Amorim, Katia; Colus, Katia Miguel; Piattoeva, Nelli

2014-01-01

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) policies and practices are local, historically and socially context-specific constructions. In addition to local ideals and policies, discursive practices concerning ECEC are influenced by universal ideals that are described and assigned by the member states of the United Nations Convention on the Rights…

Disabling Discourses and Human Rights Law: A Case Study Based on the Implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liasidou, Anastasia

2016-01-01

This article examines the symbolic power of language to construct and convey disabling discourses, albeit ample rhetoric, on the need to reinstate and safeguard disabled people's human rights and entitlements. The role of language and its discursive ramifications need to be explored and problematized in the light of legal mandates and…

Neoliberalism, Global Poverty Policy and Early Childhood Education and Care: A Critique of Local Uptake in England

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Simpson, Donald; Lumsden, Eunice; McDowall Clark, Rory

2015-01-01

The global rise of a neoliberal "new politics of parenting" discursively constructs parents in poverty as the reason for, and remedy to, child poverty. This allows for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) to become a key policy lever by using human technologies to intervene in and regulate the lives of parents and children in…

Grading the "good" body: a poststructural feminist analysis of body mass index initiatives.

PubMed

Gerbensky-Kerber, Anne

2011-06-01

This article analyzes discourse surrounding Arkansas's legislation requiring public schools to measure students' body mass index (BMI) annually and to send the scores to parents on children's report cards. Using poststructural feminist sensibilities, I explore the tensions experienced by parents, children, educators, and policymakers as this mandate was debated and implemented. The discourse illuminates salient issues about disproportionate disparities in health status that exist in communities with fewer resources, and the potentially unintended gendered consequences of health policies. I explain three dominant threads of discourse: How the economic costs of childhood obesity opened a policy window for the legislation; the presence of tensions between freedom and social control; and how BMI discourses inscribe ideological visions of bodies. Ultimately, the analysis offers insight into the discursive nature of policymaking and how class and gender are implicated in health interventions.

The hand that rocks the cradle should also rock the boat.

PubMed

Walker, B

1996-10-01

The Gender and Development Unit (GADU) was established in 1985 at Oxfam. The unit challenged previous development assumptions; gender analysis required recognition of inequalities based on class, caste, age, and education, as well as on gender. Personal attitudes and professional actions were scrutinized, views on how to achieve gender equity differed, and accusations of cultural imperialism were made. Currently, the organization has a gender policy that is implemented by managers; the "feminist thought police" are gone. Consolidation should occur under a new team. However, questions remain concerning organizational culture; gender roles and relations are culturally determined and culture-specific. There is great diversity in this regard within Oxfam. Some field offices have "family-friendly" policies and procedures, but the "glass ceiling," albeit higher, still exists for women. The ability to read, write, and respond quickly are valued by the work culture, and there is little time to reflect. Discursive expression is unwelcome in the presence of information overload. Both men and women are now making childcare arrangements, and one of the first items on the agenda of the GADU was a workplace nursery. Its establishment came about from "corporate management recognizing the need to look at process as well as product, and from field offices shaping their work cultures to their values." The struggle for gender equality has only changed its form.

Homosexuality and the Law: The Construction of Wolfenden Homonormativity in 1950s England.

PubMed

Suffee, Réshad

2016-01-01

This article analyses a television broadcast in England in 1957 in response to the Wolfenden Report (Wolfenden, 1957) into homosexuality and prostitution. Here I argue that those participants in the broadcast who are sympathetic with liberal reforms of the legislation on homosexuality utilize discourses related to normality and the public/private domains to discursively construct the Wolfenden homonormative male. In addition, I also show how, particularly through the trope of homonormativity, both the heterosexual and homosexual audiences are interpellated by the discourses exploited within the broadcast as publics whose subjectivities are reconfigured toward Wolfenden homonormativity.

Constructing the collective unconscious.

PubMed

Gullatz, Stefan

2010-11-01

Innovative attempts at collating Jungian analytical psychology with a range of 'post-modern' theories have yielded significant results. This paper adopts an alternative strategy: a Lacanian vantage point on Jungian theory that eschews an attempt at reconciling Jung with post-structuralism. A focused Lacanian gaze on Jung will establish an irreducible tension between Jung's view of archetypes as factors immanent to the psyche and a Lacanian critique that lays bare the contingent structures and mechanisms of their constitution, unveiling the supposed archetypes'a posteriori production through the efficacy of a discursive field. Theories of ideology developed in the wake of Lacan provide a powerful methodological tool allowing to bring this distinction into focus. An assembly of Lacan's fragmentary accounts of Jung will be supplemented with an approach to Jungian theory via Žižek's Lacan-oriented theory of the signifying mechanism underpinning 'ideology'. Accordingly, the Jungian archetype of the self, which is considered in some depth, can begin to be seen in a new light, namely as a 'master signifier', not only of Jung's academic edifice, but also -and initially-of the discursive strategies that establish his own subjectivity. A discussion of Jung's approach to mythology reveals how the 'quilting point' of his discourse comes to be coupled with a correlate in the Real, a non-discursive 'sublime object' conferring upon archetypes their fascinating aura. © 2010, The Society of Analytical Psychology.

Just Desserts? Exploring Constructions of Food in Women's Experiences of Bulimia.

PubMed

Churruca, Kate; Ussher, Jane M; Perz, Janette

2017-08-01

Bulimia, an eating disorder that affects more women than men, involves binging and compensatory behaviors. Given the importance of food in experiences of these behaviors, in this article, we examine constructions of food in accounts of bulimic behavior: how these constructions relate to cultural discourses, and their implications for subjectivity. Fifteen women who engaged in bulimic behaviors were interviewed. Through a thematic decomposition of their accounts, we identified six discursive constructions of food: "good/healthy" or "bad/unhealthy," "contaminating body and soul," "collapsed into fat," "pleasurable reward," "comfort," and "fuel for the body." Many constructions were consolidated through participants' embodied experiences, but made available through discourses in public health, biomedicine, and femininity, and had implications for subjectivity in terms of morality, spirituality, and self-worth. Thus, despite women deploying these constructions to make sense of their bulimic behaviors, they are culturally normative; this point has implications for therapeutic and preventive strategies for bulimia.

Where is the child? A discursive exploration of the positioning of children in research on mental-health-promoting interventions.

PubMed

Bergnehr, Disa; Zetterqvist Nelson, Karin

2015-02-01

The present study explores the discursive positioning of children in research articles on mental-health-promoting interventions. The questions under investigation are: are children positioned as active or passive agents, are children's health and wellbeing contextualised, and if so how? How is the child perceived; that is, how are age, gender, socioeconomic status, family structure, dis/ability, and so on accounted for? We found that the positioning of the child as passive and formed by adults prevails; health is largely individualised and decontextualised in that it is depicted as being contingent on the person's own capabilities. However, there are instances in which children are positioned as active subjects, their opinions are in focus, and their health and wellbeing are connected to social relations and context. We propose a more active discussion about how children and wellbeing are conceptualised in the outlining, implementation and research of public health interventions. Moreover, children--just like adults--should be increasingly regarded as service users who are entitled to have a say in matters that concern them. © 2015 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2015 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Re-visioning evidence: Reflections on the recent controversy around gender selective abortion in the UK.

PubMed

Unnithan, Maya; Dubuc, Sylvie

2018-06-01

Reports in the British media over the last 4 years have highlighted the schisms and contestations that have accompanied the reports of gender selective abortions amongst British Asian families. The position that sex-selection may be within the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act has particularly sparked controversy amongst abortion campaigners and politicians but equally among medical practitioners and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service who have hitherto tended to stay clear of such debates. In what ways has the controversy around gender-based abortion led to new framings of the entitlement to service provision and new ways of thinking about evidence in the context of reproductive rights? We reflect on these issues drawing on critiques of what constitutes best evidence, contested notions of reproductive rights and reproductive governance, comparative work in India and China as well as our involvement with different groups of campaigners including British South Asian NGOs. The aim of the paper is to situate the medical and legal provision of abortion services in Britain within current discursive practices around gender equality, ethnicity, reproductive autonomy, probable and plausible evidence, and policies of health reform.

"I'm No Superman": Understanding Diabetic Men, Masculinity, and Cardiac Rehabilitation.

PubMed

Dale, Craig M; Angus, Jan E; Seto Nielsen, Lisa; Kramer-Kile, Marnie; Pritlove, Cheryl; Lapum, Jennifer; Price, Jennifer; Marzolini, Susan; Abramson, Beth; Oh, Paul; Clark, Alex

2015-12-01

Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programs help patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) reduce their risk of recurrent cardiac illness, disability, and death. However, men with CHD and Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) demonstrate lower attendance and completion of CR despite having a poor prognosis. Drawing on gender and masculinity theory, we report on a qualitative study of 16 Canadian diabetic men recently enrolled in CR. Major findings reflect two discursive positions men assumed to regain a sense of competency lost in illness: (a) working with the experts, or (b) rejection of biomedical knowledge. These positions underscore the varied and sometimes contradictory responses of seriously ill men to health guidance. Findings emphasize the priority given to the rehabilitation of a positive masculine identity. The analysis argues that gender, age, and employment status are powerful mechanisms of variable CR participation. © The Author(s) 2015.

Homework setting in cognitive behavioral therapy: A study of discursive strategies.

PubMed

Beckwith, Andrew; Crichton, Jonathan

2014-01-01

In recent years cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a form ofpsychotherapy, has risen to prominence due to a large number of studies attesting to its efficacy. A crucial part of the model of CBT is the use of the therapeutic strategy, homework, in which the client undertakes therapeutic tasks between sessions. The focus of this study is on how homework is implemented in sessions of CBT. This is undertaken through an analysis utilizing theme-orientated discourse analysis of video recorded sessions of CBT of one therapist and a client. Through tracking the focal theme of homework, the analysis focuses on homework as a face-threatening act (Brown and Levinson 1987) and how discursive strategies are employed to manage this issue. Other analytic themes include the use of frames (Goffman 1974) and constructed dialogue (Tannen 2007). It is the expertise of the therapist in putting into practice the therapeutic task of homework that is the subject of this study.

Multilingualism as Legitimate Shared Repertoires in School Communities of Practice: Students' and Teachers' Discursive Constructions of Languages in Two Schools in England

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Yongcan; Evans, Michael

2016-01-01

This paper reports on the findings of a 12-month project within a broader research programme that looks at a group of East European students with English as an Additional Language (EAL) in England. The data are derived from interviews with the students and teachers in two schools. The findings show that EAL students had a keen interest in English.…

Critical Discourse Analysis of Discursive Reproduction of Identities in the Thai Undergraduates' Home for Children with Disabilities Website Project: Critical Analysis of Lexical Selection

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sudajit-apa, Melada

2017-01-01

Analyzing discourses can shed light on language as a social semiotic system, the construction of identity and the operations of ideology and power. The purpose of this study is twofold. Firstly, it aims to unveil Thai fourth-year English-major students' utilization of lexical choices with connotations that enact the identities of the Baan Nontapum…

The personal is scientific: Women, gender, and the production of sexological knowledge in Germany and Austria, 1900-1931.

PubMed

Leng, Kirsten

2015-08-01

This article addresses the roles women and gender played in the production of sexological knowledge in the early 20th century, particularly in German-speaking Europe. Although existing scholarship focuses almost exclusively on the work of "founding fathers" such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Magnus Hirschfeld, women in fact made important contributions to the field. Based on analysis of texts written between 1900 and 1931, this article shows how women were able to successfully mobilize their gender as a privileged form of "situated knowledge," and thereby assert their authority over and superior insights into certain subject areas, namely, female sexualities and sexual difference. At the same time, however, this article also highlights the constraints upon women's gendered standpoint. It shows that women's sexological writing was not just informed by their gender but also by their class and race. Moreover, because gender threatened to cast their work as insufficiently objective and scientific, women cleaved to sexology's rules of evidence and argumentation, and adopted the field's ideological trappings in order to participate in discursive contestations over sexual truths. By interrogating gender, this article introduces much-needed nuance into existing understandings of sexology, and reframes sexology itself as a site wherein new sexual subjectivities were imagined, articulated, and debated. However, it also raises fundamental questions about women sexologists' capacity to create knowledge about women and female sexualities that was truer, more correct, and more authentic than that produced by men. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Identity ambivalence and embodiment in women's accounts of the gynaecological examination.

PubMed

Galasiński, Dariusz; Ziółkowska, Justyna

2007-10-01

In this article we are interested in the negotiation of identities in women's narratives of their gynaecological examination and more particularly, the shifts of identity positions that permeate their stories. Taking a constructionist view of discourse and identity, we make two arguments in the article. First, we demonstrate that women talking about their gynaecological examinations constructed their selves ambiguously. The identity spaces that they discursively opened in the narratives were not inhabited. Second, we show that the embodiment of their identities--the inclusion of the body into the construction of self--fluctuates depending on the stage of the narrative of the examination.

Claiming and displaying national identity: Irish travellers' and students' strategic use of 'banal' and 'hot' national identity in talk.

PubMed

Joyce, Carmel; Stevenson, Clifford; Muldoon, Orla

2013-09-01

Two complementary explanations have been offered by social psychologists to account for the universal hold of national identity, first that national identity is ideologically assumed, as it forms the 'banal' background of everyday life, and second that national identity is 'hotly' constructed and contested in political and everyday settings to great effect. However, 'banal' and 'hot' aspects of national identity have been found to be distributed unevenly across national and subnational groups and banality itself can be strategically used to distinguish between different groups. The present paper develops these ideas by examining possible reasons for these different modes and strategies of identity expression. Drawing upon intergroup theories of minority and majority relations, we examine how a group who see themselves unequivocally as a minority, Irish Travellers, talk about their national identity in comparison to an age and gender-matched sample of Irish students. We find that Travellers proactively display and claim 'hot' national identity in order to establish their Irishness. Irish students 'do banality', police the boundaries and reputation of Irishness, and actively reject and disparage proactive displays of Irishness. The implications for discursive understandings of identity, the study of intra-national group relations and policies of minority inclusion are discussed. © 2012 The British Psychological Society.

Can promoting patient decision making be exclusionary? Moral expectations and cultural difference in the narratives of UK maternity clinicians.

PubMed

Davies, Myfanwy; Elwyn, Glyn; Papadopoulos, Irena; Fleming, Lon; Williams, Gareth

2009-01-01

Patient autonomy in health care decision making is increasingly advocated as a means of promoting patients' 'responsibilities' for treatments and costs. However, little is known with regard to clinicians' understanding of patients' potential responsibilities in decision making. We explore how clinicians may view decision making as a 'moral' obligation and examine how moral virtue is discursively constructed in this context and in the face of ethnic and social difference. Data reported are derived from an interview study that examined perceptions of maternity decision making among Arab Muslim women and clinicians. Results reported here are from the clinician sample which includes obstetricians, general practitioners (GPs) and midwives. Clinicians perceived that a key element of their role involved imparting relevant information to their clients and, increasingly, involving them in making autonomous decisions about their care. However, by analysing and assessing the attribution of specific cultural differences in clinicians' discussion of decision making processes with minority group women, we demonstrate how some clinicians justified their failure to promote autonomy through shared decision making with women from these groups. We will demonstrate these attributes to be those of passivity and non-rationality which entail some negative moral judgements and which have a complex relationship to gender and power

Public foetal images and the regulation of middle-class pregnancy in the online media: a view from South Africa.

PubMed

Macleod, Catriona; Howell, Simon

2015-01-01

Ultrasonography images and their derivatives have been taken up in a range of 'public' spaces, including medical textbooks, the media, anti-abortion material, advertising, the Internet and public health facilities. Feminists have critiqued the personification of the foetus, the bifurcation of the woman's body and the reduction of the pregnant woman to a disembodied womb. What has received less attention is how these images frequently intersect with race, class, gender and heteronormativity in the creation of idealised and normative understandings of pregnancy. This paper focuses on the discursive positioning of pregnant women as 'mothers' and foetuses as 'babies' in online media targeted at a South African audience, where race and class continue to intersect in complex ways. We show how the ontologically specific understandings of 'mummies' and 'babies' emerge through the use of foetal images to construct specific understandings of the 'ideal' pregnancy. In the process, pregnant women are made responsible for ensuring that their pregnancy conforms to these ideals, which includes the purchasing of the various goods advertised by the websites. Not only does this point to a commodification of pregnancy, but also serves to reinforce a cultural understanding of White, middle-class pregnancy as constituting the normative 'correct' form of pregnancy.

The air's got to be far cleaner here: a discursive analysis of place-identity threat.

PubMed

Hugh-Jones, Siobhan; Madill, Anna

2009-12-01

That talk is never disinterested complicates the relationship between the environment and the claims people make about it. Talk about place, and one's self in it, is particularly complex when the environment poses risk or is otherwise problematized. This study, a secondary analysis of interview data, seeks to extend discursive work on place-identity by examining the ways in which 14 residents of a small English village talk about themselves and their locale. The locale accommodates an active quarry, and many residents had lodged complaints to the quarry about dust, noise and vibrations from blasting. Attention to the interactional context of the interviews illustrates the ways in which (simply) interviewing people about their locale can threaten self- and place-identity. When asked about life in the village, interviewees oriented to two main dilemmas in protecting self- and place-identity: (1) how to justify continued residence in a challenging environment and (2) how to complain about the locale whilst maintaining positive place-identity. Discursive responses to these dilemmas drew upon typical identity processes, such as self- and place distinctiveness and the formulation of out-groups, as well as upon constructions of localized power-sharing and morally obligated tolerance of risk. We suggest that research on problematical places, and of environmental risk, needs to be sensitized to how it may constitute a threat to self- and place-identity, and how this may mediate formulations self and place, as well as of environmental risk.

Discursive Psychology and Educational Technology: Beyond the Cognitive Revolution

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Friesen, Norm

2009-01-01

As an alternative to dominant cognitive-constructivist approaches to educational technology, this article makes the case for what has been termed a discursive, or postcognitive, psychological research paradigm. It does so by adapting discursive psychological analyses of conversational activity to the study of educational technology use. It applies…

Language, Metaphor, and Creativity in Discursive Prose.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ross, William T.

1978-01-01

Traces the denigration of discursive prose back through the "New Criticism" to Romanticism and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who saw poetry as special and separate from other rhetoric. Notes that discursive prose can be just as creative and interesting as poetry. Urges composition teachers to shift their point of view accordingly. (RL)

Boycunts and bonus holes: trans men's bodies, neoliberalism, and the sexual productivity of genitals.

PubMed

Edelman, Elijah Adiv; Zimman, Lal

2014-01-01

Recent theorizations of trans embodiment have brought attention to the ways neoliberalism limits the productivity of nonnormatively gendered bodies. This article deals with the discursive framing of embodiment and sexual desirability among trans men and other transmasculine persons negotiating Internet-mediated homoerotic spaces. Micro-level analysis of discourse structure and macro-level analysis of socio-political context together show how trans men navigate homonormative sexual economies by linguistically recuperating their bodies' sexually productivity. Instead of undermining claims of embodied masculinity and homoerotic value, potential sites of exclusion-i.e., trans genitals-become sites of flexible accumulation that enhance rather than detract from their bearers' desirability.

A Social Semiotic Analysis of the Discursive Construction of Teacher Identity in the "Book of Rules and Customs" of the Australian Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Donoghue, Tom; Chapman, Anne

2011-01-01

Up until the 1960s, Catholic schools throughout most of the English-speaking world were dominated by members of religious teaching orders, including female religious. For over a century following their establishment in 1866, one of the most prominent female religious teaching orders in Australia was that of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Most…

More Than Clinical Waste? Placenta Rituals Among Australian Home-Birthing Women

PubMed Central

Burns, Emily

2014-01-01

The discursive construction of the human placenta varies greatly between hospital and home-birthing contexts. The former, driven by medicolegal discourse, defines the placenta as clinical waste. Within this framework, the placenta is as much of an afterthought as it is considered the “afterbirth.” In home-birth practices, the placenta is constructed as a “special” and meaningful element of the childbirth experience. I demonstrate this using 51 in-depth interviews with women who were pregnant and planning home births in Australia or had recently had home births in Australia. Analysis of these interviews indicates that the discursive shift taking place in home-birth practices from the medicalized model translates into a richer understanding and appreciation of the placenta as a spiritual component of the childbirth experience. The practices discussed in this article include the burial of the placenta beneath a specifically chosen plant, consuming the placenta, and having a lotus birth, which refers to not cutting the umbilical cord after the birth of the child but allowing it to dry naturally and break of its own accord. By shifting focus away from the medicalized frames of reference in relation to the third stage of labor, the home-birthing women in this study have used the placenta in various rituals and ceremonies to spiritualize an aspect of birth that is usually overlooked. PMID:24453467

More than clinical waste? Placenta rituals among Australian home-birthing women.

PubMed

Burns, Emily

2014-01-01

The discursive construction of the human placenta varies greatly between hospital and home-birthing contexts. The former, driven by medicolegal discourse, defines the placenta as clinical waste. Within this framework, the placenta is as much of an afterthought as it is considered the "afterbirth." In home-birth practices, the placenta is constructed as a "special" and meaningful element of the childbirth experience. I demonstrate this using 51 in-depth interviews with women who were pregnant and planning home births in Australia or had recently had home births in Australia. Analysis of these interviews indicates that the discursive shift taking place in home-birth practices from the medicalized model translates into a richer understanding and appreciation of the placenta as a spiritual component of the childbirth experience. The practices discussed in this article include the burial of the placenta beneath a specifically chosen plant, consuming the placenta, and having a lotus birth, which refers to not cutting the umbilical cord after the birth of the child but allowing it to dry naturally and break of its own accord. By shifting focus away from the medicalized frames of reference in relation to the third stage of labor, the home-birthing women in this study have used the placenta in various rituals and ceremonies to spiritualize an aspect of birth that is usually overlooked.

'It seemed churlish not to': How living non-directed kidney donors construct their altruism.

PubMed

Challenor, Julianna; Watts, Jay

2014-07-01

Our objective was to explore how prospective altruistic kidney donors construct their decision to donate. Using a qualitative design and biographical-narrative semi-structured interviews, we aimed to produce text for analysis on two levels: the social implications for subjectivity and practice and a tentative psychodynamic explanation of the participants' psychological investment in the discourses they used. A total of six prospective altruistic kidney donors were interviewed. A psychosocial approach to the analysis was taken. In-depth discourse analysis integrated Foucauldian with psycho-discursive approaches and psychodynamic theory was applied to sections of text in which participants seemed to have particular emotional investment. Analysis generated three major discursive themes: other-oriented, rational and self-oriented discourses. The desire to donate was experienced as compelling by participants. Participants used discourses to position themselves as concerned with the needs of the recipient, to resist questioning and criticism, and to manage difficult feelings around mortality. Participants tended to reject personal motivations for altruistic donation, positioning relatives' disapproval as selfish and illogical. These results suggest that the term 'altruistic' for living non-directed organ donation constrains available discourses, severely limiting what can be said, felt, thought and done by donors, clinicians and the public. A more useful approach would acknowledge potential psychological motives and gains for the donor. © The Author(s) 2013.

Stigma, deviance and morality in young adults' accounts of inflammatory bowel disease.

PubMed

Saunders, Benjamin

2014-09-01

For young adults with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), perceived stigma has been found to be a salient concern. Drawing on interviews with individuals with IBD aged 18-29 (n = 16), this article uses rhetorical discourse analysis to explore how stigma is discursively constructed by young adults, with a focus on the moral underpinnings of the participants' talk. Their representations showed both felt stigma and enacted stigma; principally related to the perceived taboo surrounding the symptoms of their condition, which often led to the non-disclosure or concealment of the condition. The different ways in which stigma is manifested in the accounts present a challenge to recent arguments questioning the relevance of this concept in chronic illness research, though it was found that it is not adequate to look at stigma alone and, given the unstable nature of IBD, negotiating stigma in relation to possible charges of deviance is a pertinent issue for these young adults. For instance, non-disclosure because of shame could result in individuals experiencing blame. Accounts were constructed through a range of discursive strategies, allowing the participants to present themselves in morally appropriate ways throughout. Suggestions are made about future directions in addressing stigma and deviance in relation to this cohort. © 2014 The Author. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2014 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Formation of the Foreign Language Discursive Competence of Pedagogical Faculties Students in the Process of Intercultural Dialogue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ponomarenko, Larisa N.; Zlobina, Irina S.; Galitskih, Elena O.; Rublyova, Olga S.

2017-01-01

The article presents the main ideas of concept of foreign language discursive competence formation among university and secondary school students by means of intercultural dialogue. The concept includes fundamental principles, activity stages of educational process, and criteria of foreign language discursive competence formation. Innovation of…

Fonctions Discursives et Communication Ecrite (Discursive Functions and Written Communication). Melanges Pedagogiques, 1974.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Duda, R.

This article describes discursive functions in the three major areas of non-literary written communication: (1) official or personal correspondence; (2) technical reading or editing; and (3) the press. Illocutionary acts are examined under their three aspects: graphic, lexical, enunciative. This description is intended to result in training…

Struggling to care: A discursive-material analysis of negotiating agency among HIV-positive MSM.

PubMed

Canoy, Nico A; Ofreneo, Mira Alexis P

2017-11-01

A discursive-materialist framework of agency asserts the mutual constitution of agency within cultural discursive, economic, and embodied material structures. Understanding how HIV-positive men who have sex with men in the Philippines negotiate agency vis-a-vis wider social structures, we utilized Foucault's care of the self to locate agency in relationships with the self, others, and the broader world. Using data from narratives of 20 Filipino HIV-positive men who have sex with men, we analyzed the negotiation of agency as HIV-positive as embedded in the unique discursive terrain of Roman Catholicism and the economic materiality of a developing country. Three main processes of negotiating agency are elaborated: (1) questioning the spiritual self and the sexual body in the relationship with the self, (2) navigating interpersonal limits to care giving in the relationship with others, and (3) reclaiming human dignity in health care in the relationship with the broader world. Theoretical insights on the discursive and material constitution of healing in light of discursive and material challenges are discussed.

Imagine: towards an integrated and applied social psychology.

PubMed

Abell, Jackie; Walton, Chris

2010-12-01

This commentary does not aim to engage with the epistemological and ontological technicalities of the discursive psychology maintained by epistemological constructionism and discursive psychology reliant on ontological constructionism approaches that form the basis of the two papers under discussion; other commentators, both in this issue and in the future, are likely to do that. Instead, this commentary aims to situate both papers within a broader frame of contemporary, primarily British social psychology, to ponder the circumstances that gave rise to them and their implications for social psychologists, discursive and non-discursive, alike. We have organized this commentary into two parts. The first part considers two simple questions. First, why does Corcoran critique DPEC for failing to do things that other discursive approaches provide for? And, second, why does Corcoran take DPEC research to task for having too little potential for or made too little contribution to improving the lives and subjectivities of people in general? These two questions are not unrelated, but for clarity's sake we will try to answer them separately. The second part of this commentary will consider the influence of discursive psychology on social psychology more generally.

[Some considerations about aesthetic medicine].

PubMed

Ferreira, Francisco Romão

2010-01-01

In this article, we will discuss some aspects of the construction of the meanings concerning the body from the scientific speech which was modeled based on modern thinking and became the hegemonic thinking of some sectors of the medical field. Meanings attributed to the body bring questions that come from other areas of the social life and those questions will build the aesthetic parameters which will be part of the identity construction, in the relation with the body itself, subjectivity and healthcare. We will describe some moments of the construction of the modern scientific thought and how this thought became hegemonic, influences the common sense, naturalizes identity construction and how dealing with the body, interferes in the healthcare, show a division among some sectors of the biomedicine, reinforce an specific type of medical rationality and makes an epistemic base and principle (theoretical and discursive) to some sectors connected to aesthetic medicine and aesthetic surgeries.

A Moral Panic? The Problematization of Forced Marriage in British Newspapers.

PubMed

Anitha, Sundari; Gill, Aisha K

2015-09-01

This article examines the British media's construction of forced marriage (FM) as an urgent social problem in a context where other forms of violence against women are not similarly problematized. A detailed analysis of four British newspapers over a 10-year period demonstrates that media reporting of FM constitutes a moral panic in that it is constructed as a cultural problem that threatens Britain's social order rather than as a specific form of violence against women. Thus, the current problematization of FM restricts discursive spaces for policy debates and hinders attempts to respond to this problem as part of broader efforts to tackle violence against women. © The Author(s) 2015.

Applying systemic functional linguistics to conversations with dementia: the linguistic construction of relationships between participants.

PubMed

Müller, Nicole; Mok, Zaneta

2012-02-01

Social isolation in dementia is a growing concern as the incidence and prevalence of dementing conditions is on the rise in many societies. Positive social interactions, which foster the construction and enactment of positive interpersonal relationships and therefore positive discursive identities, make an important contribution to emotional well-being. In this article, we investigate how two women diagnosed with dementia of the Alzheimer's type use language to relate to each other and two visiting graduate students. We use Systemic Functional Linguistics as an analytical framework, specifically investigating the use of vocatives and naming, and conversational moves and exchanges. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

Second nature.

PubMed

Corcoran, Tim

2009-06-01

Are ontological meanings somehow sacrosanct in arguments concerning psychology - particularly those scored by discursive accounts of human being? Or is the purposeful deferment of ontological concerns in discursive psychology (DP) another instance of method-fetishism (Koch, 1981)? Shotter's (1995) understanding of joint action and Chouliaraki's (2002) critical realist account of social action combine to support an alternate position to the predominant discursive psychological approach informed by epistemological constructionism (DPEC). The DPEC position is here contrasted with a discursive psychological approach informed by ontological constructionism (DPOC). Via this distinction, a path for future discursive psychological studies is charted, one which values understanding the kinds of practical-moral knowledges (Shotter, 1993) available to people in accounting for themselves and their actions as psychosocial agents. Contrary to claims that the DPEC/DPOC distinction is supercilious (Edley, 2001) or oxymoronic (Drewery, 2000), the importance of debating what ontology can mean for psychology is herein seen as central to the pursuit of personal, relational and collective wellness in contemporary life.

"Judging a body by its cover": young Lebanese-Canadian women's discursive constructions of the "healthy" body and "health" practices.

PubMed

Abou-Rizk, Zeina; Rail, Geneviève

2014-02-01

Our interest stems from the dramatic increase in the number of obesity studies, which expose Canadian women to a huge amount of information that links health to weight. Using feminist poststructuralist and postcolonial lenses, this paper investigates young Lebanese-Canadian women's constructions of the body and "health" practices within the context of the dominant obesity discourse. Participant-centered conversations were held with 20 young Christian Lebanese-Canadian women. A thematic analysis was first conducted and was followed by a poststructuralist discourse analysis to further our understanding of how the participants construct themselves as subjects within various discourses surrounding health, obesity, and the body. Our findings reveal that most participants conflate the "healthy" body and the "ideal" body, both of which they ultimately portray as thin. The young women construct the "healthy"/"ideal" body as a solely individual responsibility, thus reinforcing the idea of "docile bodies." The majority of participants report their frequent involvement in disciplinary practices such as rigorous physical activity and dietary restrictions, and a few young women mention the use of other extreme forms of bodily monitoring such as detoxes, dieting pills, and compulsive exercise. We discuss the language employed by participants to construct their multiple and shifting subjectivities. For instance, many of these Lebanese-Canadian women use the term "us" to dissociate themselves from Lebanese women ("them"), whom they portray as overly focused on thinness and beauty and engaged in physical activity and other bodily practices for "superficial" purposes. The participants also use the "us/them" trope to distance themselves from "Canadian" women (read: white Euro-Canadian women), whom they portray as very physically active for purposes beyond the improvement of the physical appearance of the body. We discuss the impacts of the young Christian Lebanese-Canadian women's hybrid cultural identities and diasporic spaces on their discursive constructions of the body and "health" practices. Finally, we examine the participants' fluid subject-positions: On one hand, they construct themselves as neoliberal subjects re-citing elements of dominant neoliberal discourses (self-responsibility for health, traditional femininity, and obesity) but, on the other hand, they at times construct themselves as "timid" poststructuralist subjects expressing awareness of, and "micro-resistance" to such discourses.

Reification in the Learning of Square Roots in a Ninth Grade Classroom: Combining Semiotic and Discursive Approaches

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shinno, Yusuke

2018-01-01

This paper reports on combining semiotic and discursive approaches to reification in classroom interactions. It focuses on the discursive characteristics and semiotic processes involved in the teaching and learning of square roots in a ninth grade classroom in Japan. The purpose of this study is to characterize the development of mathematical…

"But at School … I Became a Bit Shy": Korean Immigrant Adolescents' Discursive Participation in Science Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ryu, Minjung

2013-01-01

In reform-based science curricula, students' discursive participation is highly encouraged as a means of science learning as well as a goal of science education. However, Asian immigrant students are perceived to be quiet and passive in classroom discursive situations, and this reticence implies that they may face challenges in discourse-rich…

An integrative discourse perspective on positive leadership in public health care.

PubMed

Pietiläinen, Ville; Salmi, Ilkka

2017-02-06

Purpose This study aims to take a discursive view on positive leadership (PL). A positive approach has gained momentum in recent years as appropriate leadership practices are implemented in organizations. Despite the turn toward discursive approaches in organization studies, there is insufficient evidence supporting PL as a socially constructed experience. Design/methodology/approach The present study addresses an integrative discourse perspective for capturing the PL concept as a social process within the public health-care context. Findings Four meanings of PL are highlighted: role-taking, servicing, balancing and deciphering. Research limitations/implications The meanings shift the emphasis of certain PL definitions to a contextual interpretation. For scholars, the perspective demonstrates a multidimensional process approach in the desired organizational context as a counterbalance to one unanimously agreed-upon PL definition. Practical implications For leaders, an integrative discourse perspective offers tools for comprehending PL as a process: how to identify, negotiate and reconcile various PL meanings. Originality/value An integrative discourse perspective provides a novel perspective capturing the PL concept within the public health-care field.

Enhancing the authenticity of assessments through grounding in first impressions.

PubMed

Humă, Bogdana

2015-09-01

This article examines first impressions through a discursive and interactional lens. Until now, social psychologists have studied first impressions in laboratory conditions, in isolation from their natural environment, thus overseeing their discursive roles as devices for managing situated interactional concerns. I examine fragments of text and talk in which individuals spontaneously invoke first impressions of other persons as part of assessment activities in settings where the authenticity of speakers' stances might be threatened: (1) in activities with inbuilt evaluative components and (2) in sequential contexts where recipients have been withholding affiliation to speakers' actions. I discuss the relationship between authenticity, as a type of credibility issue related to intersubjective trouble, and the characteristics of first impression assessments, which render them useful for dealing with this specific credibility concern. I identify four features of first impression assessments which make them effective in enhancing authenticity: witness positioning (Potter, 1996, Representing reality: Discourse, rhetoric and social construction, Sage, London), (dis)location in time and space, automaticity, and extreme formulations (Edwards, 2003, Analyzing race talk: Multidisciplinary perspectives on the research interview, Cambridge University Press, New York). © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

HIV treatment as prevention in Jamaica and Barbados: magic bullet or sustainable response?

PubMed

Barrow, Geoffrey; Barrow, Christine

2015-01-01

This discursive article introduces HIV treatment as prevention (TasP) and identifies various models for its extrapolation to wider population levels. Drawing on HIV surveillance data for Jamaica and Barbados, the article identifies significant gaps in HIV response programming in relation to testing, antiretroviral treatment coverage, and treatment adherence, thereby highlighting the disparity between assumptions and prerequisites for TasP success. These gaps are attributable, in large part, to sociocultural impediments and structural barriers, severe resource constraints, declining political will, and the redefinition of HIV as a manageable, chronic health issue. Antiretroviral treatment and TasP can realize success only within a combination prevention frame that addresses structural factors, including stigma and discrimination, gender inequality and gender-based violence, social inequality, and poverty. The remedicalization of the response compromises outcomes and undermines the continued potential of HIV programming as an entry point for the promotion of sexual, health, and human rights. © The Author(s) 2013.

Egalitarian: From Homophile to Helicophile in Post-World War II America.

PubMed

Janssen, Diederik F

2017-09-20

The presidency of gender in the Anglo-American taxonomy of sexualities historically has been haunted by the irruption of "other" parameters of medicalization, censure, and caesura, not in the least absolute and relative measures of age. Where today's clinical psychologists feel the need to age-specify adult homosexuality in such Hirschfeldian terms as androphilia, however, the felt need is indeed still essentially clinical. That cosmopolitan expressions such as homosexual, LGB, or queer rarely require such specifications relies on a protracted and today, arguably, complete disarticulation of sex/gender and age/maturity as parameters of sexual orientation, accreditation, and mobilization. Notably disconnected discursive frames gave voice to this Anglophone crystallization of "the normal homosexual" (circa 1950-1980): criminological, psychiatric, psychophysiological, and psychodynamic typologies of "sexual deviation" (variably tending to correlate, align, or subsume same-sex and age-disparate intimacies); territorializing apologias of gay, but also of "Greek," "pederast," and "man-boy," socialities; anthropological-historical exotification of "age-stratified homosexualities"; and mostly European, proto-queer critiques of all "bourgeois" sexual classification.

"Women...mourn and men carry on": African women storying mourning practices: a South African example.

PubMed

Kotzé, Elmarie; Els, Lishje; Rajuili-Masilo, Ntsiki

2012-09-01

African mourning of loss of lives in South Africa has been shaped by discursive practices of both traditional African cultures and the sociopolitical developments under apartheid and in post-apartheid South Africa. This article reports on changes in mourning practices on the basis of a literature review and uses a collection of examples to highlight the navigation of some cultural and gendered issues relating to mourning, against the backdrop of the everyday experiences of loss of life in South Africa due to violence and HIV/AIDS. The article draws on African womanist and feminist scholarship and focuses on the intersections between cultural and gender practices of bereavement in the lives of professional urban African women. The authors argue for the use of positioning theory and witnessing practices to honor and story the ongoing struggle of African women as these women take different agentic positions by accepting, questioning, resisting, and/or changing cultural mourning practices while they compassionately witness the self and others in the narratives they live.

The intrapsychics of gender: a model of self-socialization.

PubMed

Tobin, Desiree D; Menon, Meenakshi; Menon, Madhavi; Spatta, Brooke C; Hodges, Ernest V E; Perry, David G

2010-04-01

This article outlines a model of the structure and the dynamics of gender cognition in childhood. The model incorporates 3 hypotheses featured in different contemporary theories of childhood gender cognition and unites them under a single theoretical framework. Adapted from Greenwald et al. (2002), the model distinguishes three constructs: gender identity, gender stereotypes, and attribute self-perceptions. The model specifies 3 causal processes among the constructs: Gender identity and stereotypes interactively influence attribute self-perceptions (stereotype emulation hypothesis); gender identity and attribute self-perceptions interactively influence gender stereotypes (stereotype construction hypothesis); and gender stereotypes and attribute self-perceptions interactively influence identity (identity construction hypothesis). The model resolves nagging ambiguities in terminology, organizes diverse hypotheses and empirical findings under a unifying conceptual umbrella, and stimulates many new research directions. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

The subjective cut: sex reassignment surgery in 1960s and 1970s science fiction.

PubMed

Sellberg, Karin

2016-12-01

This article considers the way in which ethical concerns about sex reassignment surgery and especially the research and clinical practice of the sexologist Dr John Money (1921-2006) is being negotiated in the 1960s and 1970s novels Myra Breckinridge and Myron by Gore Vidal and The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter. Drawing on the theories of gender and embodiment developed by Money, the article reads the novels as a critical response and discursive interaction with emergent sexological concepts. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

A social constructionist analysis of talk in episodes of psychiatric student nurses conversations with clients in community clinics.

PubMed

Middleton, Lyn; Uys, Leana

2009-03-01

This paper is a report of a study of the 'discursive doings' of psychiatric nursing students' practice as they are jointly constructed in conversations with clients in community psychiatric clinics. This construction of psychiatric nursing as a therapeutic, holistic, person-centred, interactional process is central to the identity of psychiatric nursing as a discipline. However, recent studies are beginning to suggest a dissonance between the person-centred rhetoric and institutional practice. A discourse analysis was conducted in 2002-03 using the transcripts of seven conversations between nursing students and clients visiting psychiatric community clinics on a monthly basis. These were selected from a sample of 20 conversations based on their clarity and completeness. Texts were analysed using the notational systems of Silverman and Mishler and some of Fairclough's analytic text structure features. In all the transcripts, an agenda for surveillance was explicitly established in the students' opening sequences of each text. Almost all exchanges in the texts were organized around cycles of questions from students and responses from clients, which allowed students to control the conversations. Information delivery was also found to be at work within the texts, although it is not as prominent or as persistent as the question and answer structure. Students took up the responses of clients selectively as though working to a pre-set agenda. These discursive activities manifest a symptom-like approach to nursing care and have the effect of disabling the development of client-authorized expressions of agency.

Exploring HRD in two Welsh NHS Trusts: analysing the discursive resources used by senior managers.

PubMed

Sambrook, Sally

2007-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to examine human resource development (HRD) in the UK National Health Service (NHS), and particularly in two Welsh NHS Trusts, to help illuminate the various ways in which learning, training and development are talked about. The NHS is a complex organisation, not least with its recent devolution and separation into the four distinct countries of the UK. Within this, there are multiple and often conflicting approaches to human resource development associated with the various forms of employee, professional (nursing, medical etc.), managerial and organisational development. How people are developed is crucial to developing a modern health service, and yet, with the diverse range of health workers, HRD is a complex process, and one which receives little attention. Managers have a key role and their perceptions of HRD can be analysed through the discursive resources they employ. From an interpretivist stance, the paper employs semi-structured interviews with seven Directorate-General Managers, and adopts discourse analysis to explore how HRD is talked about in two Welsh NHS Trusts. The paper finds some of the different discourses used by different managers, including those with a nursing background and those without. It examines how they talk about HRD, and also explores their own (management) development and the impact this has had on their sense of identity. The paper highlights some of the tensions associated with HRD in the NHS, including ambiguities between professional and managerial development, the functional and physical fragmentation of HRD, conflict between a focus on performance/service delivery and the need to learn, discursive dissonance between the use of the terms training and learning, a delicate balance between "going on courses" and informal, work-related learning, inequities regarding "protected time" and discourses shifting between competition and cooperation. These tensions are exposed to help develop a shared understanding of the complexities of HRD within the NHS. The paper concludes with a summary of the different discursive resources employed by senior managers to articulate and accomplish HRD. These are "surfaced" to enable managers and HRD practitioners, amongst others, to construct common repertoires and shared meaning.

Gender and climate change in the Indian Hindu-Kush Himalayas: global threats, local vulnerabilities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ogra, M. V.; Badola, R.

2014-11-01

Global climate change has numerous implications for members of mountain communities who feel the impacts in both physical and social dimensions. In the Western Himalayas of India, a majority of residents maintain a livelihood strategy that includes a combination of subsistence or small-scale agriculture, seasonal pastoral migration, male out-migration, and localized natural resource extraction. Particularly under conditions of heavy male outmigration, but throughout the region, mountain women play a key role in providing labor and knowledge related to the management of local natural resources, yet often lack authority in related political and economic decision-making processes. This gap has important implications for addressing the impacts of climate change: while warming temperatures, irregular patterns of precipitation and snowmelt, and changing biological systems present challenges to the viability of these traditional livelihood portfolios throughout the region, mountain women increasingly face new challenges in their roles as household managers that have not adequately been emphasized in larger scale planning for climate change adaptation and mitigation. These challenges are complex in nature, and are shaped not only by gender issues but also interacting factors such as class, caste, ethnicity, and age (among others). In this paper, we review the main arguments behind the discursive gender/climate change nexus, discuss the implications for gendered vulnerabilities and transformation of adaptive capacities in the region, and suggest ways that researchers and policymakers seeking to promote "climate justice" can benefit from the incorporation of gender-based perspectives and frameworks.

Academic Careers and the Valuation of Academics. A Discursive Perspective on Status Categories and Academic Salaries in France as Compared to the U.S., Germany and Great Britain

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Angermuller, Johannes

2017-01-01

Academic careers are social processes which involve many members of large populations over long periods of time. This paper outlines a discursive perspective which looks into how academics are categorized in academic systems. From a discursive view, academic careers are organized by categories which can define who academics are (subjectivation)…

An Exploratory Study of Students' Constructions of Gender in Science, Engineering and Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lynch, Ingrid; Nowosenetz, Tessa

2009-01-01

Despite an appreciation of the need to increase gender sensitivity and awareness among tertiary students in the field of science, engineering and technology (SET), there is a paucity of research that explores how students in this field construct gender. A greater understanding of such constructions can assist in transforming gender relations and…

Everyday (in)equality at home: complex constructions of gender in South African families.

PubMed

Helman, Rebecca; Ratele, Kopano

2016-01-01

High rates of violence and HIV have been documented within the South African context. Constructions of masculinity and femininity that position men as dominant and highly sexually active and women as subordinate and acquiescent have been found to contribute towards gender inequality. This inequality is in turn related to negative health consequences, specifically violence against women, children, and other men, as well as sexual risk. Within this context it becomes important to explore how problematic constructions of gender are being (re)produced and how these constructions are being challenged. Families have been identified as key sites in which gender is both constructed and enacted on a daily basis and it is within this space that children are first exposed to notions of gender. This article draws from a study that was intended to expand on the limited understandings of the ways in which gender (in)equality is constructed and conveyed within the context of South African families on an everyday basis. Children and parents in 18 families from a range of different material and cultural backgrounds were interviewed about the meanings and practices of gender within their homes. Data were analysed using a Foucauldian discourse analysis. The data reveal how problematic constructions of masculinity and femininity are (re)produced but also challenged within a range of different families. Gender and gender (in)equality are therefore routinely accomplished in complex ways. These findings have important implications for promoting gender equality and therefore for disrupting violence and sexual risk as gendered health issues.

Everyday (in)equality at home: complex constructions of gender in South African families

PubMed Central

Helman, Rebecca; Ratele, Kopano

2016-01-01

Background High rates of violence and HIV have been documented within the South African context. Constructions of masculinity and femininity that position men as dominant and highly sexually active and women as subordinate and acquiescent have been found to contribute towards gender inequality. This inequality is in turn related to negative health consequences, specifically violence against women, children, and other men, as well as sexual risk. Within this context it becomes important to explore how problematic constructions of gender are being (re)produced and how these constructions are being challenged. Families have been identified as key sites in which gender is both constructed and enacted on a daily basis and it is within this space that children are first exposed to notions of gender. Objective This article draws from a study that was intended to expand on the limited understandings of the ways in which gender (in)equality is constructed and conveyed within the context of South African families on an everyday basis. Design Children and parents in 18 families from a range of different material and cultural backgrounds were interviewed about the meanings and practices of gender within their homes. Data were analysed using a Foucauldian discourse analysis. Results The data reveal how problematic constructions of masculinity and femininity are (re)produced but also challenged within a range of different families. Gender and gender (in)equality are therefore routinely accomplished in complex ways. Conclusions These findings have important implications for promoting gender equality and therefore for disrupting violence and sexual risk as gendered health issues. PMID:27293123

Theorising Practice in Single-Sex Work.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tett, Lyn

1996-01-01

The practice of adult educators in single-sex settings is directed by "theories-in-use" about the social construction of gender, such as gender is culturally constructed but people internalize gender stereotypes; gender stereotypes can be challenged and changed; and power to define gender roles lies in patriarchy, but it can be contested…

Marvelous medicines and dangerous drugs: the representation of prescription medicine in the UK newsprint media.

PubMed

Prosser, Helen

2010-01-01

Using discourse analysis, this study examines the representation of prescription medicines in the UK newsprint media and, specifically, how the meaning and function of medicines are constructed. At the same time, it examines the extent to which the newsprint media represents a resource for health information, and considers how it may encourage or challenge faith in modern medicine and medical authority. As such, it extends analysis around concepts such as the informed patient and examines the representation of patients and doctors and the extent to which patient-doctor identities promoted in the newsprint media reflect a shift away from paternalism to negotiated encounters. Findings show the media constructs a discrete, contradictory, and frequently oversimplified set of characterizations about medicine. Moreover, it discursively constructs realities that justify and sustain medial dominance. Ideological paradigms in discourse assign patients as passive and disempowered while simultaneously privileging "expert" knowledge. This constructs a reality that marginalizes patients' participation in decision-making.

Talking about taste: using a discursive psychological approach to examine challenges to food evaluations.

PubMed

Wiggins, Sally

2004-08-01

This study is concerned with developing the interdisciplinary nature of food research, and with examining eating practices as they occur in everyday situations. The aim is to demonstrate how discursive approaches may contribute to eating research using a specific analytical example. A discursive psychological approach is used to examine mealtime conversations from 10 families with the analysis focusing on how food evaluations are challenged in interaction-for example, asking someone to justify what they think is 'wrong' with the food. Data are presented with 7 examples of the 30 challenges that were found within the data corpus. The analysis demonstrates how people may be held accountable for their expressed taste preferences when being challenged, and how this contributes to our understanding of eating as primarily an individual and embodied experience. It is argued that a specific and detailed analysis of eating interactions provides an alternative way of conceptualising food evaluations as discursive rather than mentalistic concepts. A discursive approach also opens up practical ways in which the social and familial aspects of eating may be examined as they occur as part of food practices.

Gender Self-Definition and Gender Self-Acceptance in Women: Intersections with Feminist, Womanist, and Ethnic Identities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hoffman, Rose Marie

2006-01-01

The author explored the relationships among women's gender identity constructs as well as the relationships of those constructs to ethnic identity. Nine of the 12 hypothesized relationships between gender self-definition and female identity development statuses and between gender self-acceptance and female identity development statuses were…

Gendered Communities of Practice and the Construction of Masculinities in Turkish Physical Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atencio, Matthew; Koca, Canan

2011-01-01

This paper analyses the construction of masculinities in Turkish physical education through Carrie Paechter's conceptualisation of gendered communities of practice. According to Paechter, educational communities of practice operate as sites of gendered activity. Membership within these communities contributes to the construction of a gendered…

"You can't choose these emotions… they simply jump up": Ambiguities in Resilience-Building Interventions in Israel.

PubMed

Yankellevich, Ariel; Goodman, Yehuda C

2017-03-01

Following the growing critique of the use of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in post-disaster interventions, a new type of intervention aimed at building resilience in the face of traumatic events has been making its first steps in the social field. Drawing on fieldwork of a resilience-building program for pre-clinical populations in Israel, we analyze the paradoxes and ambiguities entailed in three inter-related aspects of this therapeutic project: The proposed clinical ideology aimed at immunizing against traumas; the discursive and non-discursive practices used by the mental-health professionals; and, participants' difficulties to inhabit the new resilient subject. These contradictions revolve around the injunction to rationally handle emotions in response to disruptive traumatic events. Hence, the attempt to separate between a sovereign rational subject and a post-traumatic subject is troubled in the face of experiences of trauma and social suffering. Furthermore, we demonstrate how these difficulties reconstitute unresolved tensions between mimetic and anti-mimetic tendencies that have been pervading the understanding of trauma in the therapeutic professions. Finally, we discuss how the construction of the resilient subject challenges the expanding bio-medical and neoliberal self-management paradigm in mental health.

Narratives of Transgender People Detained in Prison: The Role Played by the Utterances “Not” (as a Feeling of Hetero- and Auto-rejection) and “Exist” (as a Feeling of Hetero- and Auto-acceptance) for the Construction of a Discursive Self. A Suggestion of Goals and Strategies for Psychological Counseling

PubMed Central

Hochdorn, Alexander; Faleiros, Vicente P.; Valerio, Paolo; Vitelli, Roberto

2018-01-01

Purpose: Understanding how transgender people, who committed criminal offenses and are detained in prison, produce a narrative representation of self within different prison contexts. More specifically, this study has been based on two sub-aims: On a paradigmatic level, it has been aimed at critically investigating how the discursive positioning among the Self and the Other might promote the internalization of positive and/or negative attitudes toward the self. On a pragmatic level, it intends to offer some suggestions for goals and strategies of psychological counseling with these inmates inside such highly institutionalized contexts. Method and Materials: In total, 23 in-depth interviews were conducted with transgender women detained in either female or male prison contexts in Italy and Brazil. The lexical, semantic, and semiotic structure of the transcribed interviews has been investigated by adopting the quali-quantitative software Iramuteq for performing statistical text-mining analysis. Frequency, correspondences, and distribution of the most representative utterances across the corpus of data have been accessed and critically analyzed. Results: The findings showed that transgender inmates in Brazil made repeated use of the adverb “not,” while the verb “exist” became the most representative word for the Italian sample. In Brazil, indeed, transgender women assumed masculine-driven behavior due to a common imprisonment with cis-gender men. On the contrary, transgender women in Italy are detained in protected sections, where they are allowed to wear female clothing and continue hormonal treatments. Surprisingly, transgender inmates in Italy suffered more violence in a female sector when compared to exclusively male jails. Conclusions: Transgender people represent a challenge for prison administration because it is not clear in which penitentiary context they should be detained. They should receive special attentions in order to face their special needs, which are radically different when compared to other typologies of inmates. Within penitentiary contexts, psychological counseling with transgender women should pay a special attention to the several psycho-social dimensions of this existential condition. In particular, psychological counselors should consider its inner complex articulation within different social, cultural and normative contexts. PMID:29387034

Narratives of Transgender People Detained in Prison: The Role Played by the Utterances "Not" (as a Feeling of Hetero- and Auto-rejection) and "Exist" (as a Feeling of Hetero- and Auto-acceptance) for the Construction of a Discursive Self. A Suggestion of Goals and Strategies for Psychological Counseling.

PubMed

Hochdorn, Alexander; Faleiros, Vicente P; Valerio, Paolo; Vitelli, Roberto

2017-01-01

Purpose: Understanding how transgender people, who committed criminal offenses and are detained in prison, produce a narrative representation of self within different prison contexts. More specifically, this study has been based on two sub-aims: On a paradigmatic level, it has been aimed at critically investigating how the discursive positioning among the Self and the Other might promote the internalization of positive and/or negative attitudes toward the self. On a pragmatic level, it intends to offer some suggestions for goals and strategies of psychological counseling with these inmates inside such highly institutionalized contexts. Method and Materials: In total, 23 in-depth interviews were conducted with transgender women detained in either female or male prison contexts in Italy and Brazil. The lexical, semantic, and semiotic structure of the transcribed interviews has been investigated by adopting the quali-quantitative software Iramuteq for performing statistical text-mining analysis. Frequency, correspondences, and distribution of the most representative utterances across the corpus of data have been accessed and critically analyzed. Results: The findings showed that transgender inmates in Brazil made repeated use of the adverb "not," while the verb "exist" became the most representative word for the Italian sample. In Brazil, indeed, transgender women assumed masculine-driven behavior due to a common imprisonment with cis-gender men. On the contrary, transgender women in Italy are detained in protected sections, where they are allowed to wear female clothing and continue hormonal treatments. Surprisingly, transgender inmates in Italy suffered more violence in a female sector when compared to exclusively male jails. Conclusions: Transgender people represent a challenge for prison administration because it is not clear in which penitentiary context they should be detained. They should receive special attentions in order to face their special needs, which are radically different when compared to other typologies of inmates. Within penitentiary contexts, psychological counseling with transgender women should pay a special attention to the several psycho-social dimensions of this existential condition. In particular, psychological counselors should consider its inner complex articulation within different social, cultural and normative contexts.

Cisgender male and transgender female sex workers in South Africa: gender variant identities and narratives of exclusion.

PubMed

Samudzi, Zoe; Mannell, Jenevieve

2016-01-01

Sex workers are often perceived as possessing 'deviant' identities, contributing to their exclusion from health services. The literature on sex worker identities in relation to health has focused primarily on cisgender female sex workers as the 'carriers of disease', obscuring the experiences of cisgender male and transgender sex workers and the complexities their gender identities bring to understandings of stigma and exclusion. To address this gap, this study draws on 21 interviews with cisgender male and transgender female sex workers receiving services from the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce in Cape Town, South Africa. Our findings suggest that the social identities imposed upon sex workers contribute to their exclusion from public, private, discursive and geographic spaces. While many transgender female sex workers described their identities using positive and empowered language, cisgender male sex workers frequently expressed shame and internalised stigma related to identities, which could be described as 'less than masculine'. While many of those interviewed felt empowered by positive identities as transgender women, sex workers and sex worker-advocates, disempowerment and vulnerability were also linked to inappropriately masculinised and feminised identities. Understanding the links between gender identities and social exclusion is crucial to creating effective health interventions for both cisgender men and transgender women in sex work.

The limits of intensive feeding: maternal foodwork at the intersections of race, class, and gender.

PubMed

Brenton, Joslyn

2017-07-01

Despite experiencing numerous barriers, mothers today confront increasing social pressure to embody perfection through their foodwork. A growing body of social science research identifies how gender and class inequality shape women's perceptions of food and their feeding strategies, but this research is thus far limited in its understanding of the roles that race and ethnic identity play in a mother's food landscape. Drawing on 60 in-depth interviews with a racially and economically diverse group of mothers, this paper examines how feeding young children is intertwined with contemporary ideas about child health as well as women's efforts to negotiate race, class, and gender hierarchies. Extending Hays' concept of intensive mothering, rich descriptions of feeding children reveal how mothers in this study are discursively engaged with what I call an 'intensive feeding ideology' - the widespread belief that good mothering is synonymous with intensive food labour. Drawing on intersectional theory, this article discusses the limits of an intensive feeding ideology, particularly for poor and middle-class mothers of colour. The findings contribute to an understanding of how power relations are embedded within food ideologies and how mothers of young children attempt to negotiate them. © 2017 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.

"Relinquish the reins": persuasion and consensus in the discourse of pregnancy and childbirth advice literature.

PubMed

Rodgers, Ornaith

2015-03-01

Popular pregnancy and childbirth advice books constitute an important source of information for pregnant women. These texts shape women's perceptions of pregnancy, childbirth and the medical care they will receive during this time. This article reports on a study of the enactment of power relations between pregnant women and their medical caregivers in the discourse of pregnancy and childbirth advice literature and its implications for practice. The study focuses on the discursive positioning of women in relation to medical personnel through a critical discourse analysis of two popular advice books, one in English and one in French. The article suggests that through the use of a number of key discursive strategies, pregnant women are constructed as under the control of the medical institution in these texts. However, this control is not achieved by an overt oppressive discourse, instead it is achieved through persuasion and consensus by generating the consent of pregnant women to comply with medical norms. The medical institution is represented in these texts as a dominant force while women are constructed as powerless recipients of medical care. Medical professionals should firstly consider whether the power relations represented in these texts correspond to those enacted in clinics and delivery rooms. Secondly, caregivers should be cautious about recommending popular pregnancy and childbirth advice books to women as the relationship between pregnant women and their caregivers may be undermined by the negative power asymmetry enacted in these texts. Copyright © 2014 Australian College of Midwives. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Linguistic Turn and Gendering Language in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arimbi, Diah A.; Kwary, Deny A.

2016-01-01

Language constructs how humans perceive things. Since language is a human construction, it tends to be biased as it is mainly men's construction. Using gender perspectives, this paper attempts to discuss the imbalance in gender representations found in the examples given in an English learner's dictionary, that is, the "Cambridge Advanced…

What the papers say: Reading therapeutic landscapes of women's health and empowerment in Uganda.

PubMed

MacKian, Sara C

2008-03-01

The Ugandan Ministry of Health emphasises the pivotal position of women in securing the nation's health. Drawing on the concept of therapeutic landscapes, this paper explores media constructions of health in Uganda in order to question what role these may play in creating or undermining a 'therapeutic landscape' which supports women's empowerment in a health context. The paper argues for the importance of understanding discursively constructed notions of health in order to ground the promotion of a health care strategy in the everyday lives and discourses of the users implicated. Given the Ugandan government's current drive to both empower women and push an agenda of formally provided health care, this paper provides an exploratory analysis of how far newspapers facilitate or hinder this vision.

A construct-driven investigation of gender differences in a leadership-role assessment center.

PubMed

Anderson, Neil; Lievens, Filip; van Dam, Karen; Born, Marise

2006-05-01

This study examined gender differences in a large-scale assessment center for officer entry in the British Army. Subgroup differences were investigated for a sample of 1,857 candidates: 1,594 men and 263 women. A construct-driven approach was chosen (a) by examining gender differences at the construct level, (b) by formulating a priori hypotheses about which constructs would be susceptible to gender effects, and (c) by using both effect size statistics and latent mean analyses to investigate gender differences in assessment center ratings. Results showed that female candidates were rated notably higher on constructs reflecting an interpersonally oriented leadership style (i.e., oral communication and interaction) and on drive and determination. These results are discussed in light of role congruity theory and of the advantages of using latent mean analyses.

Gender and the gynecological examination: women's identities in doctors' narratives.

PubMed

Galasiński, Dariusz; Ziółkowska, Justyna

2007-04-01

The authors explore the constructions of gender in male doctors' narratives of gynecological examinations. Focusing on the ways in which gender identities are constructed in the stories of the medical encounter, they argue, first, that gender is more flexible during the visit with a gynecologist than has been suggested. Gendered identities are assumed and put aside as the interaction progresses, with its final stage--the pelvic examination--being constructed with gender removed. Second, they argue that undressing is invested with a special status during the examination. It is a gendered rite of passage between the two different ungendered subject positions of the doctor and the patient. They conclude that contrary to the assumptions in the literature on gynecological interactions, it is the genderization of undressing that is most conducive to securing the least face-threatening gynecological examination for the woman.

"United We Stand": Framing Myalgic Encephalomyelitis in a Virtual Symbolic Community.

PubMed

Lian, Olaug S; Nettleton, Sarah

2015-10-01

In this article, we report on a study that seeks to explore how the contested chronic condition myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), one of the current medical diagnoses for medically unexplained long-term exhaustion, is negotiated within the context of Norwegian internet sites. From an analysis of discussions on 14 internet forums sustained by and for people living with ME, we seek to understand how their online activity sustains a virtual symbolic community (VSC). After exploring the content on these sites, we identified four discursive domains, or fields of conversation, that are demarcated by a discursive frame, or norms, values, and goals that define and reinforce the boundaries of the community. Interpreting discursive domains and their discursive frame provides insight not only to the culture of the ME VSC but also to its role in an international social health movement, including its potential for becoming politically influential. © The Author(s) 2014.

The discursive production of classroom mathematics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, Kim; Hodson, Elaine; Brown, Tony

2013-09-01

School mathematics is a function of its discursive environment where the language being used formats mathematical activity. The paper explores this theme through an extended example in which the conduct of mathematical teaching and learning is restricted by regulative educational policies. It considers how mathematics is discursively produced by student teachers within an employment-based model of teacher education in England where there is a low university input. It is argued that teacher reflections on mathematical learning and teaching within the course are patterned discursively in line with formal curriculum framings, assessment requirements and the local demands of their placement school. Both teachers and students are subject to regulative discourses that shape their actions and as a consequence this regulation influences the forms of mathematical activity that can take place. It is shown how university sessions can provide a limited critical platform from which to interrogate these restrictions and renegotiate them.

The Construction of Motherhood: Tasks, Relational Connection, and Gender Equality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cowdery, Randi S.; Knudson-Martin, Carmen

2005-01-01

This qualitative analysis of 50 couples explored how gender equality is related to the construction of motherhood in their day-to-day interactions. Results identified two models of mothering: (a) mothering as a gendered talent and (b) mothering as conscious collaboration. The first model perpetuated gender inequality through a recursive…

Basotho Teachers' Constructions of Gender: Implications on Gender Equality in the Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morojele, P. J.

2012-01-01

This paper gives prominence to rural teachers' own accounts of gender in three co-educational primary schools in Lesotho. The paper employs the social constructionist paradigm as its theoretical framework. Drawing from ethnographic data (observations and informal discussions), it discusses factors that inform teachers' constructions of gender and…

Music Teachers' Constructions of Gender in Elementary Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roulston, Kathryn; Misawa, Mitsunori

2011-01-01

In spite of a growing body of research in music education that focuses on a variety of gender issues, there is still limited information on music teachers' experiences and constructions of their classroom practices in relation to their conceptualisations of gender. This paper examines music teachers' descriptions of gender in relation to their…

The Construction of Male Gender Identity through Choir Singing at a Spanish Secondary School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Elorriaga, Alfonso

2011-01-01

Several authors have recently investigated the psychological aspects that play a determinant role in choral singing during adolescence. One of these aspects is vocal identity, which influences the construction of gender identity according to adolescents' needs and societal gender roles. This article focuses on gender aspects of vocal identity…

Self-Authoring Gender outside the Binary: A Narrative Analysis of (Trans)gender Undergraduates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ashton, Kasey

2013-01-01

This narrative inquiry explored how transgender college students construct, experience, and make meaning of gender. Gender is not constructed or understood in isolation; it is therefore essential to consider how personal cognition intersects with and is influenced by an internal sense of self and relationships with others when exploring how…

Preservice teachers' discursive approaches to constructing scientific arguments from evidence to claim

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gilles, Brent David

Scientific argumentation has recently become required in K-12 classrooms, but preservice teachers often do not have prior experiences with this practice. The lack of prior experiences has made engaging in argumentation during inquiry-based content courses a priority for science teacher educators because of its importance in science education. Previous research has not examined how preservice teachers construct arguments in classroom interactions. A discourse analysis of twenty-one preservice teachers was conducted to study how preservice teachers constructed arguments within small group activities. Specifically, I drew upon discursive psychology (Potter & Wetherell, 1987) and conversation analysis (Sacks, 1972) to consider how preservice teachers' talk functioned to build arguments, as well as how their talk evolved over the course of the four targeted activities. Findings indicated that the preservice teachers oriented towards institutional norms in constructing arguments. These norms shaped the ways that arguments were constructed. The construction of arguments also included negotiating epistemic authority. This authority was used by a member of the group to take up a leadership position, which they used to direct the group's actions. However, there were moments that other group members attempted to take up epistemic stances, which created instances where members used various talk moves (e.g., overlapping speech, ignoring, and holding the conversational floor) to implicitly disagree with each other. As the activities progressed the students spontaneously adopted asynchronous online collaborative tools that seemed to shape their discourse by decreasing conceptually rich talk. The transition from talk to text also coincided with an increased reliance on the teacher, which changed from focusing on expectations of the assignment to how evidence should be organized. Overall, the findings demonstrated how preservice teachers used discourse, specifically talk, to construct arguments. The preservice teachers revealed the institutionality within their talk by orienting towards classroom norms. These norms included mentioning the teacher while discussing project needs and justifying claims. The group leaders imitated the role of a teacher within their group by using regulative talk to facilitate their group discussions. While these experiences will likely benefit the group leader when they start planning argumentation activities as inservice teachers, the other group members are not as likely to be benefited by the hierarchal structure of the groups. The spontaneous adoption of online collaborative tools transitioned their talk to becoming text-based over the last two activities. Finally, an implication of adopting asynchronous online collaborative tools is that there needs to be an emphasis placed on scaffolding student facilitated use of these environments so text-based conversations include conceptually rich talk.

Theory of Planned Behavior explains gender difference in fruit and vegetable consumption.

PubMed

Emanuel, Amber S; McCully, Scout N; Gallagher, Kristel M; Updegraff, John A

2012-12-01

A gender difference in fruit and vegetable intake (FVI) is widely documented, but not well understood. Using data from the National Cancer Institute's Food Attitudes and Behavior Survey, we assessed the extent to which gender differences in FVI are attributable to gender differences in constructs from the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Females reported more favorable attitudes and greater perceived behavior control regarding FVI than males, and these beliefs mediated the observed gender difference. Males reported greater perceived norms for FVI, but norms did not predict FVI. Gender did not moderate the influence of TPB constructs on FVI. Thus, TPB constructs substantially explained the gender difference. Interventions targeted toward adult males may benefit by promoting favorable attitudes and perceived behavioral control over FVI. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

"It's not my business": Exploring heteronormativity in young people's discourses about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues and their implications for youth health and wellbeing.

PubMed

Ng, Cara Ky; Haines-Saah, Rebecca J; Knight, Rodney E; Shoveller, Jean A; Johnson, Joy L

2017-06-01

In Canada, the issue of creating safe and inclusive school environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer students has been in the spotlight. Several researchers and advocates have pointed out the positive effects of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-positive policy frameworks on the health and wellbeing of all young people. In this article, we take a critical approach to analyzing narrative findings from qualitative interviews conducted with youth in three communities in British Columbia, Canada: "the North," Vancouver, and Abbotsford. Using a Foucauldian Discourse Analytic Approach and Butler's concept of Citationality, our analysis suggested that although explicit homophobia was largely absent from youth discussions, young people discursively constructed lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities and "communities" in ways that reified heteronormativity. Youth made references to sociopolitical discourses of libertarianism and liberalism and to homonormative stereotypes regarding gay masculinity. A few young people also alluded to egalitarian, queer-positive discourses, which appeared to interrogate structures of heteronormativity. Since studies suggest a connection between the existence of institutional supports for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer students in schools and their mental and physical wellbeing, we conclude by considering the limitations and possibilities of these sociopolitical discourses in the struggle for sexual and gender equity, and how they might help frame future health-related, anti-homophobia policy frameworks in educational settings.

He Votes or She Votes? Female and Male Discursive Strategies in Twitter Political Hashtags

PubMed Central

Cunha, Evandro; Magno, Gabriel; Gonçalves, Marcos André; Cambraia, César; Almeida, Virgilio

2014-01-01

In this paper, we conduct a study about differences between female and male discursive strategies when posting in the microblogging service Twitter, with a particular focus on the hashtag designation process during political debate. The fact that men and women use language in distinct ways, reverberating practices linked to their expected roles in the social groups, is a linguistic phenomenon known to happen in several cultures and that can now be studied on the Web and on online social networks in a large scale enabled by computing power. Here, for instance, after analyzing tweets with political content posted during Brazilian presidential campaign,we found out that male Twitter users, when expressing their attitude toward a given candidate, are more prone to use imperative verbal forms in hashtags, while female users tend to employ declarative forms. This difference can be interpreted as a sign of distinct approaches in relation to other network members: for example, if political hashtags are seen as strategies of persuasion in Twitter, imperative tags could be understood as more overt ways of persuading and declarative tags as more indirect ones. Our findings help to understand human gendered behavior in social networks and contribute to research on the new fields of computer-enabled Internet linguistics and social computing, besides being useful for several computational tasks such as developing tag recommendation systems based on users' collective preferences and tailoring targeted advertising strategies, among others. PMID:24489832

Being Female Doing Gender. Narratives of Women in Education Management

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Priola, Vincenza

2007-01-01

The paper explores gender relations in academia and discusses how gender is constructed within academic institutions. It is based upon the study of a business school, part of a British university. The construction of gender relations within this institution was of special interest because the majority of managerial roles were occupied by women.…

Try to be healthy, but don't forgo your masculinity: deconstructing men's health discourse in the media.

PubMed

Gough, Brendan

2006-11-01

The emergence of discourse around men's health has been evident now for at least 10 years across academic, policy and media texts. However, recent research has begun to question some of the assumptions presented concerning masculinity and men's health, particularly within popular media representations. The present paper builds on previous research by interrogating the construction of men's health presented in a recent special feature of a UK national newspaper (The Observer, November 27, 2005). The dataset was subjected to intensive scrutiny using techniques from discourse analysis. Several inter-related discursive patterns were identified which drew upon essentialist notions of masculinity, unquestioned differences between men and women, and constructions of men as naïve, passive and in need of dedicated help. The implications of such representations for health promotion are discussed.

Discourses of culture and illness in South African mental health care and indigenous healing, Part I: Western psychiatric power.

PubMed

Yen, Jeffery; Wilbraham, Lindy

2003-12-01

This discourse analytic study explores constructions of culture and illness in the talk of psychiatrists, psychologists and indigenous healers as they discuss possibilities for collaboration in South African mental health care. Versions of 'culture', and disputes over what constitutes 'disorder', are an important site for the negotiation of power relations between mental health practitioners and indigenous healers. The results of this study are presented in two parts. Part I explores discourses about western psychiatric/psychological professionalism, tensions in diagnosis between cultural relativism and psychiatric universalism, and how assertion of 'cultural differences' may be used to resist psychiatric power. Part II explores how discursive constructions of 'African culture' and 'African madness' work to marginalize indigenous healing in South African mental health care, despite repeated calls for collaboration.

British National Party representations of Muslims in the month after the London bombings: homogeneity, threat, and the conspiracy tradition.

PubMed

Wood, C; Finlay, W M L

2008-12-01

This study presents an analysis of articles written by prominent members of the British National Party. Each of these articles discussed Muslims and Islam in the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Two prominent discursive themes are discussed here. The first concerned the writers' constructions of the threat that Muslims and Islam pose to Britain. Central to this theme were constructions of Muslims as 'fascists', anti-white racists, and all potentially dangerous, although there was variability in this. Using the Koran as evidence, the articles present a vision of a faith which intends to take over the country; in this way, a homogenous, culturally essentialist version of Muslims is worked up. The second theme illustrates how the writers challenge those who believe that creating a British multicultural society is possible, and in doing so construct liberals and multiculturalists as also posing a threat to the country. The ways in which this represents a variety of conspiracy theory, and the implications of these constructions for social action, are discussed.

Youth Athletes, Bodies and Gender: Gender Constructions in Textbooks Used in Coaching Education Programmes in Sweden

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grahn, Karin

2014-01-01

This paper is based on analyses of ideas about girls and boys in sports as they are presented in textbooks used in coaching education programmes in Sweden. Specifically, it explores gender in relation to descriptions of girls' and boys' bodies and bodily development during puberty. Texts construct gender differences. Masculinity is shaped around…

Exploring the Contribution of Teaching and Learning Processes in the Construction of Students' Gender Identity in Early Year Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baig, Amina

2014-01-01

The present study explores how gender identity construction takes place in a single gender classroom in early years. Qualitative research guided the study design which was conducted in two public sector single gender schools. The data were collected through observations of the teacher-student interaction, student-student interaction, focused group…

Traveling with and through your backpack: a personal reflection on the infrastructure of science education

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sammel, Alison

2008-12-01

In this paper I respond to Ajay Sharma's Portrait of a Science Teacher as a Bricoleur: A case study from India, by speaking to two aspects of the bricoleur: the subject and the discursive in relation to pedagogic perspective. I highlight that our subjectivities are negotiated based on the desires of the similar and competing discourses we are exposed to, and the political powers they hold in society. As (science) teachers we modify our practices based upon our own internal arbitrations with discourses. I agree with Sharma that as teachers we are discursively produced, however, I suggest that what is missing in the discussion of his paper is the historically socially constructed nature of science or science education itself. I advocate that science education is not neutral, objective or unproblematic. Building on Gill and Levidow's (Anti-racist science teaching, 1987) critique, it is precisely because we are socially constructed by the dominant hegemonic science education discourse that we rarely articulate the underlying political or economic priorities of science; science's appropriation of other cultural ways of knowing; the way science theory has been, or is used to justify the oppression of peoples for political gain; the central role science and technology play in the defensive, economic and political agendas of nations and multinational corporations who fund science; the historical, and contemporary role science plays in rationalizing an exploitative ideological perspective towards the more-than-human world and the natural environment; and finally, the alienating effect science has on students when used as a ranking and sorting mechanism by educational systems. Therefore, we need to do what Mr. Raghuvanshi could not imagine: we need to destabilize the foundations of science education by questioning inherent structural and ideological inequities.

The nurse educator as teacher: exploring the construction of the 'reluctant instructor'.

PubMed

Bruni, N

1997-03-01

This paper explores the discursive construction of the category of teacher identified as the 'reluctant instructor'. Data are drawn from my doctoral study, an ethnography of a school of nursing located in the higher education sector in which I was employed. This study explored the question: What shapes nurse educators and what do they, in turn, shape? Participants included nurse educators who taught a pre-registration programme. Data were gathered through interview and observations of classroom teaching. Analysis focused on the discursive constitution of participants' sense of being a nurse educator and on the implications of their ways of 'knowing and doing' for students. The analysis suggests that the dominant subject positions adopted by participants were those of 'academic' and 'victim'. They employed an ideal/real dichotomy to give a sense of coherence to the inconsistencies or contradications that they saw as structuring their daily activities. Being an academic entailed being an educator, specifically a facilitator, as being competent and having some degree of autonomy. However, participants saw the reality of their situation as markedly different from their ideal; as exhibiting traits of the 'outmoded', oppressive, hospital system of nurse training. Within this context most participants positioned themselves as a 'reluctant instructor'. The implications of their practices for the creation of the 'passive student' are suggested in the paper. In this analysis the nurse educator is viewed as implicated in the formation and maintenance of the context in which she or he is located. Such a view challenges the neutrality that is implicated in understandings of the nurse educator that inform nursing texts and that helped constitute participants' sense of self.

Gangster, victim or both? The interdiscursive construction of sameness and difference in self-presentations.

PubMed

Sandberg, Sveinung

2009-09-01

The paper conceptualizes two contradictory discourses, both used by ethnic minority drug dealers in a street drug market in Oslo, Norway. Oppression discourse includes personal narratives of unemployment, racism and psycho-social problems, often combined with stories about the government and city council being unwilling to help. Drug dealers use the discourse to justify drug dealing and violence, both for themselves and in meetings with welfare organizations. Gangster discourse, on the other hand, includes a series of personal narratives emphasizing how hard, smart, and sexually alluring the young men are. Drug dealers use this discourse to gain self-respect and respect from others, and it dominates interactions on the street. An important argument in this paper is that the discursive practice of criminals inspires theoretical perspectives on criminal practice. Oppression and gangster discourses have inspired, respectively, neutralization and subculture theory. When the same people use both discourses, however, the picture becomes more complicated. The 'bilingual' discursive practice of the street drug dealers reflects the ambivalent role of the researcher, and a Scandinavian institutional and social context where street drug dealers have extensive contact with a welfare state apparatus. The paper still suggests that similar interdiscursivity may have been sacrificed in previous research to produce more coherent theoretical frameworks.

'I don't know if I should believe him': Knowledge and believability in interviews with children.

PubMed

Iversen, Clara

2014-06-01

Social psychologists interested in social interaction have, in recent years, addressed the ways that people negotiate 'who is entitled to know what' across a variety of conversational settings. Using recordings of interviews conducted as a part of a Swedish national evaluation of interventions for abused children, the current article examines how children navigate knowledge and its moral implications. The analysis focuses on a particular question ('What do you believe [the perpetrator] thinks about what he has done'), which draws on the psychological concept of mentalization: the cognitive ability to picture others' mental states based on their behaviour. The findings suggest that the concept of mentalization fails to account for the moral properties of knowing someone's thoughts: The perpetrator, most often the child's father, must be believable - recognized as both credible and knowable - for the children to claim access to his thoughts. The interviewees used contrastive constructions in claims of (no) access to their fathers' thoughts as they simultaneously contested idiomatic knowledge that undermined their claims. The article contributes to recent developments in discursive social psychology concerning how subjectivity, in particular, epistemic stance, is managed in institutional interaction, and continues the discursive psychological project of respecifying concepts such as mentalization. © 2013 The British Psychological Society.

Chapter Four: Discursive Resources

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Young, Richard F.

2008-01-01

In this chapter, the focus of attention moves from the contexts described in chapter 3 to the verbal, nonverbal, and interactional resources that participants employ in discursive practices. These resources are discussed within the frame of participation status and participation framework proposed by Goffman. Verbal resources employed by…

Employing Discourse: Universities and Graduate "Employability"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boden, Rebecca; Nedeva, Maria

2010-01-01

What constitutes graduate employability is discursively framed. In this paper we argue that whilst universities in the UK have long had an involvement in producing useful and productive citizens, the ongoing neoliberalisation of higher education has engendered a discursive shift in definitions of employability. Traditionally, universities regarded…

Discursive Tactical Negotiations within and across Literacy Coaching Interactions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hunt, Carolyn S.

2013-01-01

In this dissertation, the researcher employed de Certeau's theoretical insights into cultural production in everyday life to examine how literacy coaches and teachers discursively negotiated issues of identity, power, and positioning during coaching interactions. The study also explored how literacy coaches and teachers enacted emotions within…

Michel Foucault's Theory of Rhetoric as Epistemic.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foss, Sandra K.; Gill, Ann

1987-01-01

Formulates a middle-level theory that explains the process by which rhetroic is epistemic, using Foucault's notion of the discursive formation as a starting point. Discusses five theoretical units derived from Foucault--discursive practices, rules, roles, power, and knowledge--and relationships among them. Analyzes Disneyland, using Foucault's…

Literacy at Calhoun Colored School, 1892-1945.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Willis, Arlette Ingram

2002-01-01

Examines the historical experiences and struggles of African Americans seeking literacy access during the post Reconstruction Era. Reveals interconnections of power/knowledge relations and discursive practices of the Hampton-Tuskegee model of education that shaped literacy access and opportunity; and these discursive practices framed the school's…

The Discursive Enactment of Hegemony: Sexual Harassment and Academic Organizing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Townsley, Nikki C.; Geist, Patricia

2000-01-01

Contributes to scholarship advancing the understanding of human communication, illustrating the discursive enactment of hegemony through organizational responses to sexual harassment. Analyzes stories from both victims of sexual harassment and administrators who manage sexual harassment complaints at a major United States university. Argues that…

One size fits all? The discursive framing of cultural difference in health professional accounts of providing cancer care to Aboriginal people.

PubMed

Newman, Christy E; Gray, Rebecca; Brener, Loren; Jackson, L Clair; Johnson, Priscilla; Saunders, Veronica; Harris, Magdalena; Butow, Phyllis; Treloar, Carla

2013-01-01

Cancer is the second biggest killer of Aboriginal Australians. For some cancers, the mortality rate is more than three times higher in Aboriginal people than for non-Aboriginal people. The Aboriginal Patterns of Cancer Care Study explored barriers to and facilitators of cancer diagnosis and treatment among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in New South Wales. Our team--which includes both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers--conducted in-depth interviews between 2009 and 2010 with Aboriginal people with cancer, their carers and health professionals who care for them. In this paper, we identify recurrent patterns of 'discursive framing' in the 16 interviews with health care professionals. We are particularly interested in how these frames assisted participants in constructing a professional position on what 'cultural difference' means for the design and delivery of cancer care services to Aboriginal people. Despite geographical, organisational, disciplinary and cultural diversity, these interview participants consistently drew upon six discursive frames, which we have interpreted as either eliding a discussion of difference ('everyone is the same' and 'everyone is different') or facilitating that discussion ('different priorities,' 'different practices' and 'making difference safe'). An additional strategy appeared to actively resist either of these positions but then tended to ultimately prioritise the eliding frames. While none of our participants were dismissive of the idea that cultural identity might matter to Aboriginal people, their reliance upon familiar narratives about what that means for cancer care services has the potential to both symbolically and practically exclude the voices of a group of people who may already feel disenfranchised from the mainstream health care system. Critically unpacking the 'taken for granted' assumptions behind how health care professionals make sense of cultural difference can enrich our understanding of and response to the care needs of indigenous people affected by cancer.

Rethinking research in the medical humanities: a scoping review and narrative synthesis of quantitative outcome studies.

PubMed

Dennhardt, Silke; Apramian, Tavis; Lingard, Lorelei; Torabi, Nazi; Arntfield, Shannon

2016-03-01

The rise of medical humanities teaching in medical education has introduced pressure to prove efficacy and utility. Review articles on the available evidence have been criticised for poor methodology and unwarranted conclusions. To support a more nuanced discussion of how the medical humanities work, we conducted a scoping review of quantitative studies of medical humanities teaching. Using a search strategy involving MEDLINE, EMBASE and ERIC, and hand searching, our scoping review located 11 045 articles that referred to the use of medical humanities teaching in medical education. Of these, 62 studies using quantitative evaluation methods were selected for review. Three iterations of analysis were performed: descriptive, conceptual, and discursive. Descriptive analysis revealed that the medical humanities as a whole cannot be easily systematised based on simple descriptive categories. Conceptual analysis supported the development of a conceptual framework in which the foci of the arts and humanities in medical education can be mapped alongside their related epistemic functions for teaching and learning. Within the framework, art functioned as expertise, as dialogue or as a means of expression and transformation. In the discursive analysis, we found three main ways in which the relationship between the arts and humanities and medicine was constructed as, respectively, intrinsic, additive and curative. This review offers a nuanced framework of how different types of medical humanities work. The epistemological assumptions and discursive positioning of medical humanities teaching frame the forms of outcomes research that are considered relevant to curriculum decision making, and shed light on why dominant review methodologies make some functions of medical humanities teaching visible and render others invisible. We recommend the use of this framework to improve the rigor and relevance of future explorations of the efficacy and utility of medical humanities teaching. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Boys' and Girls' Gendered Voices in EFL Debates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cabezas Galicia, Luis Leonardo; Camacho Posada, María Fernanda; Florez Fernández, Leidy Milena

2012-01-01

This article reports a case study conducted at a school in Bogotá. It was based on constructivist and poststructuralist frameworks that viewed gender positioning as a social construction in foreign language learning contexts (Baxter, 2003; Sunderland, 1992; Tannen, 1996). Aiming to understand how ninth grade gender positioning is constructed, and…

Androgyny Versus Gender Schema: A Comment on Bem's Gender Schema Theory.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spence, Janet T.; Helmreich, Robert L.

1981-01-01

A logical contradiction in Bem's (1981) theory is outlined. The Bem Sex Role Inventory cannot measure a unidimensional construct, gender schema, and two independent constructs--masculinity and femininity. Such instruments measure self-images of instrumental and expressive personality traits which show little relationship to the constructs…

Social constructions of gender roles, gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS in two communities of the Western Cape, South Africa.

PubMed

Strebel, A; Crawford, M; Shefer, T; Cloete, A; Henda, N; Kaufman, M; Simbayi, L; Magome, K; Kalichman, S

2006-11-01

The links between gender roles, gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS risk are complex and culturally specific. In this qualitative study we investigated how women and men in two black communities in the Western Cape, South Africa, constructed their gender identities and roles, how they understood gender-based violence, and what they believed about the links between gender relations and HIV risk. First we conducted 16 key informant interviews with members of relevant stakeholder organisations. Then we held eight focus group discussions with community members in single-sex groups. Key findings included the perception that although traditional gender roles were still very much in evidence, shifts in power between men and women were occurring. Also, gender-based violence was regarded as a major problem throughout communities, and was seen to be fuelled by unemployment, poverty and alcohol abuse. HIV/AIDS was regarded as particularly a problem of African communities, with strong themes of stigma, discrimination, and especially 'othering' evident. Developing effective HIV/AIDS interventions in these communities will require tackling the overlapping as well as divergent constructions of gender, gender violence and HIV which emerged in the study.

Curious Hybrids: Creating "Not-Quite" Beings to Explore Possible Childhoods

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Knight, Linda

2016-01-01

Communications between adults and young children can expose different ideas and opinions. Adults and children have different capacities to speak, these discursive spaces can become filled with assumptions, stereotyping and conventional thinking about power and agency. If communication shifts away from the purely discursive, what might be exposed…

Humanism and Autonomy in the Neoliberal Reform of Teacher Training

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kascak, Ondrej; Pupala, Branislav; Petrova, Zuzana

2011-01-01

This article analyses the discursive unities which make possible the current transformation of teacher training and our understanding of teaching as a profession, while focusing particularly on European educational policy and the situation in Slovakia. Using Foucault's archaeological method, we reconstruct the discursive link points between the…

Positioning Personal Discourse Professionally.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McGann, Patrick

Although a Ph.D. candidate feels pressured to take sides in the discursive war in academe between social-epistemics and expressionists, he finds it difficult to do so. W. Ross Winterowd, a "spokesperson" for social-epistemic rhetoric, makes distinctions between the two camps, maintaining a discursive dichotomy between what he calls the…

The Discursive Practice of Participation in an Elementary Classroom Community

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kovalainen, Minna; Kumpulainen, Kristiina

2005-01-01

This study examines the discursive practice of participation in an elementary classroom community aiming towards collective meaning-making and joint creation of knowledge. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is shaped by the sociocultural and socio-linguistic approaches. Through examining the communicative practices and…

Constructions of sexual relationships: a study of the views of young people in Catalunia, England and Slovakia and their health implications.

PubMed

Stenner, Paul H D; Bianchi, Gabriel; Popper, Miroslav; Supeková, Marianna; Luksík, Ivan; Pujol, Joan

2006-09-01

Q methodology was applied to investigate the views of young people from Catalunia, England and Slovakia regarding sexual relationships and their health implications. The Q sorts of 188 16-18-year-olds from these three diverse European regions were reduced by Q factor analysis to six clear accounts. These accounts are presented in relation to three emergent themes: (a) traditionalism/liberalism; (b) locus of responsibility; and (c) the relationship between sex and love, and these discursive themes are discussed in relation to health-salient criteria such as awareness of sex-related risk and corresponding implications for conduct.

Gender Differences in the Structure of Marital Quality.

PubMed

Beam, Christopher R; Marcus, Katherine; Turkheimer, Eric; Emery, Robert E

2018-05-01

Marriages consist of shared experiences and interactions between husbands and wives that may lead to different impressions of the quality of the relationship. Few studies, unfortunately, have tested gender differences in the structure of marital quality, and even fewer studies have evaluated whether genetic and environmental influences on marital quality differ across gender. In this study, we evaluated gender differences in the structure of marital quality using independent samples of married male (n = 2406) and married female (n = 2215) participants from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States who provided ratings on twenty-eight marital quality items encompassing six marital quality constructs. We further explored gender differences in genetic and environmental influences on marital quality constructs in a subsample of 491 pairs of twins. Results suggest partial metric invariance across gender but structural variability in marital quality constructs. Notably, correlations between constructs were stronger in women than men. Results also support gender differences in the genetic and environmental influences on different aspects of marital quality. We discuss that men and women may approach and react to marriage differently as the primary reason why we observed differences in the structure of marital quality.

Can Neuroscience Construct a Literate Gendered Culture?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Whitehead, David

2011-01-01

The construction of boys as a gendered culture is not usually associated with neuroscience. Exceptions are publications and presentations by consultants on boys' education who adopt a "brain-based" perspective. From a neuroscience perspective, my analysis indicates the selective use of primary neuroscience research to construct and perpetuate…

Reconstruction of the boundary between climate science and politics: the IPCC in the Japanese mass media, 1988-2007.

PubMed

Asayama, Shinichiro; Ishii, Atsushi

2014-02-01

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plays a significant role in bridging the boundary between climate science and politics. Media coverage is crucial for understanding how climate science is communicated and embedded in society. This study analyzes the discursive construction of the IPCC in three Japanese newspapers from 1988 to 2007 in terms of the science-politics boundary. The results show media discourses engaged in boundary-work which rhetorically separated science and politics, and constructed the iconic image of the IPCC as a pure scientific authority. In the linkages between the global and national arenas of climate change, the media "domesticate" the issue, translating the global nature of climate change into a discourse that suits the national context. We argue that the Japanese media's boundary-work is part of the media domestication that reconstructed the boundary between climate science and politics reflecting the Japanese context.

Dissociative Experience and Cultural Neuroscience: Narrative, Metaphor and Mechanism

PubMed Central

Kirmayer, Laurence J.

2016-01-01

Approaches to trance and possession in anthropology have tended to use outmoded models drawn from psychodynamic theory or treated such dissociative phenomena as purely discursive processes of attributing action and experience to agencies other than the self. Within psychology and psychiatry, understanding of dissociative disorders has been hindered by polemical “either/or” arguments: either dissociative disorders are real, spontaneous alterations in brain states that reflect basic neurobiological phenomena, or they are imaginary, socially constructed role performances dictated by interpersonal expectations, power dynamics and cultural scripts. In this paper, we outline an approach to dissociative phenomena, including trance, possession and spiritual and healing practices, that integrates the neuropsychological notions of underlying mechanism with sociocultural processes of the narrative construction and social presentation of the self. This integrative model, grounded in a cultural neuroscience, can advance ethnographic studies of dissociation and inform clinical approaches to dissociation through careful consideration of the impact of social context. PMID:18213511

Reconstructing Indigenous ethnicities: the Arapium and Jaraqui peoples of the lower Amazon, Brazil.

PubMed

Bolaños, Omaira

2010-01-01

In Latin America, indigenous identity claims among people not previously recognized as such by the state have become a key topic of anthropological and sociological research. Scholars have analyzed the motivations and political implications of this trend and the impacts of indigenous population's growth on national demographic indicators. However, little is known about how people claiming indigenous status constructs the meaning of their indigenous ethnicity. Drawing from sixty-four indepth interviews, focus-group analyses, and participant observation, this article explores the double process of identity construction: the reconstruction of the Arapium indigenous identity and the creation of the Jaraqui indigenous identity in Brazil's Lower Amazon. The findings reveal six themes that contribute to the embodiment of a definition of indigenous identity and the establishment of a discursive basis to claim recognition: sense of rootedness, historical memory, historical transformation, consciousness, social exclusion, and identity politics.

Dissociative experience and cultural neuroscience: narrative, metaphor and mechanism.

PubMed

Seligman, Rebecca; Kirmayer, Laurence J

2008-03-01

Approaches to trance and possession in anthropology have tended to use outmoded models drawn from psychodynamic theory or treated such dissociative phenomena as purely discursive processes of attributing action and experience to agencies other than the self. Within psychology and psychiatry, understanding of dissociative disorders has been hindered by polemical "either/or" arguments: either dissociative disorders are real, spontaneous alterations in brain states that reflect basic neurobiological phenomena, or they are imaginary, socially constructed role performances dictated by interpersonal expectations, power dynamics and cultural scripts. In this paper, we outline an approach to dissociative phenomena, including trance, possession and spiritual and healing practices, that integrates the neuropsychological notions of underlying mechanism with sociocultural processes of the narrative construction and social presentation of the self. This integrative model, grounded in a cultural neuroscience, can advance ethnographic studies of dissociation and inform clinical approaches to dissociation through careful consideration of the impact of social context.

Not Too "College-Like," Not Too Normal: American Muslim Undergraduate Women's Gendered Discourses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mir, Shabana

2009-01-01

Building on an ethnographic study of American Muslim undergraduate women at two universities in Washington, D.C., I examine undergraduate Muslim women's construction of gendered discourses. Stereotypes feed into both majority and minority constructions of Muslim women's gendered identities. I highlight Muslim women's resistance to and adoption of…

Queering Constructs: Proposing a Dynamic Gender and Sexuality Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jourian, T. J.

2015-01-01

Higher education educators commonly understand social identities, including gender, to be fluid and dynamic. Lev's (2004) model of four components of sexual identity is commonly used to demonstrate the fluidity of sex, gender, and sexuality for individuals, but it does little to address the fixedness of those constructs. Through a multipronged…

An Interpretation of Juvenile Parolees' Gender Constructions at School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Brain J.

2002-01-01

This paper focuses on inner-city juvenile parolees' gendered interactions at a community school in a large southwestern city. The analysis seeks to interpret the students' gender constructions within the contexts of cultural ideologies and social-structural locations. Drawing from a year of field research at the school and interviews with youths…

Dealing with Gender in the Classroom: A Portrayed Case Study of Four Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Giraldo, Elida; Colyar, Julia

2012-01-01

This paper emerges from a qualitative case study that takes place in a US preschool setting and explores teachers' influences on the construction of children's gender identities. According to postmodern theories of gender, identity is constructed and constituted through social interactions and performances. This study focuses on the gender…

Being both and acting 'man': exploring patterns of masculinisation among young same-sex-attracted men in Thailand.

PubMed

de Lind van Wijngaarden, Jan W

2014-01-01

Twenty-five same-sex-attracted rural young Thai men were interviewed three times to investigate how their sexual subjectivity changed over an 18-month period after they completed high school and moved into a new life-phase. Many young men grew up with strong gender-based understandings of homosexuality, in which a masculine (top) partner is seen as complementing a feminine (bottom) partner. The discursive division between the masculine and feminine domains became increasingly blurred in the actual practice of dating, forcing the young men to develop new understandings of homosexuality and same-sex relations. The shift from a rural to urban environment, the use of the Internet and the experience of falling in love played important roles in this experimentation with new, increasingly masculine presentations of the self, also influenced by a modern urban masculine aesthetic. The paper concludes that the encounter between 'traditional' gender-based homosexuality and new ideas, in which masculine object-choice is important in defining sexual identity leads to a variety of fluid ideas and expressions. This process created confusion among some, and opportunities for exploration of new ways of defining sexual subjectivities among others.

Preservice Teacher Agency Concerning Education for Sustainability (EfS): A Discursive Psychological Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin, Jenny; Carter, Lyn

2015-01-01

In this paper, we utilize a discursive psychological approach to further explore agency and structure in science education research. The aim of our research is to understand how we can provide opportunities for marginalized students in preservice elementary teacher education in an Australian university to become agentic concerning environmental…

The "Ofcourseness" of Functional Literacy: Ideologies in Adult Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perry, Kristen H.; Shaw, Donita M.; Ivanyuk, Lyudmyla; Tham, Yuen San Sarah

2018-01-01

We used metastudy and metasynthesis techniques to conduct a discursive review of 101 recent publications on the topic of adult functional literacy (FL). Our purpose was to understand the ideologies shaping current definitions and conceptualizations of FL, as well as how and why FL is researched and assessed as it is. Using discursive review…

A Review of Modeling Pedagogies: Pedagogical Functions, Discursive Acts, and Technology in Modeling Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Campbell, Todd; Oh, Phil Seok; Maughn, Milo; Kiriazis, Nick; Zuwallack, Rebecca

2015-01-01

The current review examined modeling literature in top science education journals to better understand the pedagogical functions of modeling instruction reported over the last decade. Additionally, the review sought to understand the extent to which different modeling pedagogies were employed, the discursive acts that were identified as important,…

The Literacies of Things: Reconfiguring the Material-Discursive Production of Race and Class in an Informal Learning Centre

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thiel, Jaye Johnson; Jones, Stephanie

2017-01-01

Drawing on our documentation of transforming an informal learning centre (the Playhouse) in a multilingual, working-class neighbourhood, this paper presents significant and deliberate material-discursive changes at the Playhouse that produced unpredictable shifts in belongings among young children. More specifically, this paper entwines our…

Discursive Battles about the Meaning of University: The Case of Danish University Reform and Its Academics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Krejsler, John

2006-01-01

The meaning of university and, subsequently, academics' working conditions are rapidly changing as knowledge economy and globalisation discourses continue to deepen across the Western world. Higher education and research agendas are increasingly staged in the discursive universe of knowledge economy language: common strategies and harmonisation…

Ethnicity and Education in China and Vietnam: Discursive Formations of Inequality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DeJaeghere, Joan; Wu, Xinyi; Vu, Lisa

2015-01-01

This article aims to understand how ethnicity is discursively framed in national policies in China and Vietnam and argues that policy discourses affect how the "problem" of ethnicity and educational inequalities is framed and how these inequalities can be addressed. The analysis shows how both Marxist and market-economy governing…

Discursive "Policy Logics" of Mergers in US Higher Education: Strategy or Tragedy?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stephenson, Sandria S.

2011-01-01

Mergers are part of the historical fabric of US higher education. However, the current economic recession and other policy issues have experts and academicians predicting an increase in higher education mergers in the USA. Consequently, this study analysed the discursive "policy logics" surrounding merger negotiations in US higher…

Linguistic Legitimation of Political Events in Newspaper Discourse

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ali, Marwah Kareem; Christopher, Anne A.; Nordin, Munif Zarirruddin Fikri B.

2016-01-01

This paper examines the discursive structures employed in legitimizing the event of U.S. forces withdrawal from Iraq and identifies them in relation to linguistic features. It attempts to describe the relation between language use and legitimation discursive structures in depicting political events. The paper focuses on the political event of U.S.…

Discursive Institutionalism: Towards a Framework for Analysing the Relation between Policy and Curriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wahlström, Ninni; Sundberg, Daniel

2018-01-01

Discourse approaches in education policy analysis have gained prominence in the last decade. However, though the literature on policy discourses is growing, different conceptions of the "discursive" dimension and its potential for empirical analysis related to the field of curriculum policy have not yet been fully researched. To address…

The "Illusion of Life" Rhetorical Perspective: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Music as Communication.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sellnow, Deanna; Sellnow, Timothy

2001-01-01

Suggests the "illusion of life" rhetorical perspective increases understanding about how discursive linguistic symbols and non-discursive aesthetic symbols function together to communicate and persuade in didactic music. Argues that lyrics and music work together to offer messages comprised of both conceptual and emotional content…

Disruptive Events: Elite Education and the Discursive Production of Violence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saltmarsh, Sue

2008-01-01

This paper considers the discursive production of violence in the context of educational markets. Drawing on a larger study of sexually violent incidents that occurred in an elite private boys' school in Sydney, Australia, in 2000, the paper examines disciplinary traditions and communicative practices surrounding these events. Insights from Michel…

Discursive Shadowing in Linguistic Ethnography. Situated Practices and Circulating Discourses in Multilingual Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dewilde, Joke; Creese, Angela

2016-01-01

We consider discursive shadowing as methodology in linguistic ethnography and how it refines our analyses of participants' situated practices. In addition to the constant and extended company the researcher and key participant keep with one another in the field, shadowing in a linguistic ethnographic approach includes the ubiquitous…

Discursive Strategies in Corporate Image Building of Monsanto

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koca-Helvaci, Zeynep Cihan

2017-01-01

Since the public's awareness and interest in the usage of biotechnology in agriculture has increased drastically, this study seeks to discover the macro and micro discursive strategies in corporate image building by Monsanto, which is not only the leader but also happens to be the most criticized company of the agribusiness market (Mitchell,…

Discursive Power and Creativity in Inter-Professional Work

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paloniemi, Susanna; Collin, Kaija

2012-01-01

This paper discusses how discursive power and creativity are found to be inter-related in a context not traditionally associated with creative work; the operating theatre of a hospital. Here, it is proposed that creativity relies on socio-cultural factors emphasizing the practical nature of creativity, and highlighting the fact that a large part…

Language Policy, In-Migration and Discursive Debates in Wales

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Edwards, Catrin Wyn

2017-01-01

Drawing on theory from critical language policy literature, this article explores the impact of discourses on in-migration on Welsh language policy. By focussing on discursive debates surrounding the subject of in-migration, the article analyses how a range of actors produce and reproduce discourses on in-migration in Wales and how these…

The Discursive Framing of International Education Programs in British Columbia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cover, Dwayne

2016-01-01

This study examines how international education programs in British Columbia have been discursively framed by government and media sources. Over the past two decades, international education programs have expanded in number and scale in the province, a phenomenon that has been interpreted by some education researchers and media sources as…

Discursive Obstruction and Elite Opposition to Environmental Activism in the Czech Republic

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shriver, Thomas E.; Adams, Alison E.; Cable, Sherry

2013-01-01

Extant research on social movements has highlighted activists' discursive tactics to challenge the state, yet little analytical attention focuses on elite efforts to dominate the discourse arena through the deployment of oppositional frames. This paper analyzes elite oppositional framing surrounding the placement of a highway bypass in the Czech…

Normative Beliefs, Discursive Claims, and Implementation of Reform-Based Science Standards

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Veal, William R.; Riley Lloyd, Mary E.; Howell, Malia R.; Peters, John

2016-01-01

Reform-based science instruction is guided by teachers' normative beliefs. Discursive claims are how teachers say they teach science. Previous research has studied the change in teachers' beliefs and how beliefs influence intended practice and action in the classroom. Few studies have connected what teachers believe, how they say they teach, and…

Education, Justice, and Discursive Agency: Toward an Educationally Responsive Discourse Ethics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin, Christopher

2016-01-01

Jürgen Habermas argues that principles of justice should be decided through rational agreement as opposed to force or coercion. Christopher Martin argues in this essay that the success of such a project presupposes sufficiently developed capacities for discursive agency equally distributed within a diverse public sphere. This epistemic…

On Making the I Universal: From Langer to Britton to Kinneavy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Golson, Emily Becker; Kirscht, Judith

According to S. K. Langer, people create meaning through presentational and discursive symbolism. Presentational symbolism, Langer suggests, is an abstracted sense of experienced life, while discursive symbolism is a series of subordinating or coordinating positions that set in motion the relation of ideas and permits the discussion of causation.…

"I Mean, We're Guys": Constructing Gender at an All-Male Trade School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arbeit, Miriam R.; Hershberg, Rachel M.; Johnson, Sara K.; Lerner, Jacqueline V.; Lerner, Richard M.

2017-01-01

For young men, the transition to adulthood may be a time of heightened adherence to traditional gender roles and norms of masculinity. However, recent research with young men in gender-specific contexts has indicated that some contexts support a construction of masculinity that is more inclusive. Through a theoretical thematic analysis of…

Gendered Inequity in Society and the Academy: Policy Initiatives, Economic Realities and Legal Constraints

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Waldron-Moore, Pamela; Jacobs, Leslie R.

2010-01-01

Of all the social constructs impacting the contemporary world, gender is perhaps the most pervasive and the most insidious. Its inequities creep into our everyday lives with impunity. Across the globe, gender construction has evoked challenge, undergone reform and, in some instances, transformed thinking in societies. Yet, for all the gains made…

Reconceptualizing the Gendered Body: Learning and Constructing Masculinities and Femininities in School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paechter, Carrie

2006-01-01

How children learn to construct and enact masculinities and femininities is clearly an issue for education and one that has been explored in a wide variety of ways. In recent years, however, our conceptions of gender have once again become problematic, particularly given a gradual slippage regarding the sex/gender distinction and the increasing…

The Gendered Construction of Physical Education Content as the Result of the Differentiated Didactic Contract

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Verscheure, Ingrid; Amade-Escot, Chantal

2007-01-01

Background: Research on gender in physical education has pointed out the social construction of gendered bodies and minds through the curriculum. It has been shown that girls do not benefit from equal opportunities to participate in physical activities. Developed within the theoretical framework of the "didactique" tradition, this paper…

Undisciplined beginnings, academic success, and discursive psychology.

PubMed

Billig, Michael

2012-09-01

This paper reflects on the conditions under which Discourse and social psychology, Common knowledge, and the author's Arguing and thinking were written. These books, which were independently conceived, were not specifically written as contributions to 'discursive psychology', for discursive psychology did not exist at that time. Their authors were rejecting conventional approaches to doing psychological research. The paper discusses what it takes for a new academic movement, such as discursive psychology, to be successfully established in the current climate of 'academic capitalism'. Two requirements are particularly mentioned: the necessity for a label and the necessity for adherents to be recruited. Of the three books, only Discourse and social psychology was outwardly recruiting its readers to a new way of doing social psychology. Arguing and thinking, with its celebration of ancient rhetoric, was much more ambiguous in its aims. It was turning away from present usefulness towards the past. By claiming to be 'an antiquarian psychologist' the author was rejecting disciplinary thinking. The paper also considers the intellectual costs of establishing a new specialism or sub-discipline. The 'first generation' may have freedom, but success can bring about a narrowing of perspectives and the development of orthodoxies for subsequent academic generations. This applies as much to the development of experimental social psychology as to discursive psychology. These processes are particular enhanced in the present socio-economic situation of contemporary universities, which make it more difficult for young academics to become, in the words of William James, 'undisciplinables'. ©2012 The British Psychological Society.

Male appropriation and medicalization of childbirth: an historical analysis.

PubMed

Cahill, H A

2001-02-01

This paper aims to explore through historical analysis some of the means by which medicine successfully appropriated and medicalized pregnancy and childbirth and to consider the impact that this has had on women's experiences within maternity care. The appropriation and medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth by men are rooted in a patriarchal model that has been centuries in the making. A model that perceives women as essentially abnormal, as victims of their reproductive systems and hormones, it is also one that defines pregnancy as inherently pathological - a clinical crisis worthy of active intervention. In both law and medicine men have used their power to define reproduction as a biological defect (LeMoncheck L. 1996 Journal of Clinical Ethics 7, 160--176), requiring both legal regulation and medical intervention, whilst feminist writers have long argued that women's experiences within the health care system at least to some extent reflects their social position. Male justifications of female inferiority have been developed and nurtured through professional discourses and socialization processes inherent within medical education and practice (Cahill H. 1999 MA Thesis, University of Keele). These assumptions are internalized and reproduced to shape quite profoundly, the nature of doctors' interactions with women in their care. Perhaps more fundamentally, such discursive explanations of women's bodies as inherently defective continue to shape women's position in society. Maternity care is a key area in which women's ability to exercise real choice and make informed decisions is limited and where doctor-patient interactions are themselves constructions of existing gender orders; women's autonomy continues to be violated through both quite subtle and overt discourse and practice.

Self construction in schizophrenia: a discourse analysis.

PubMed

Meehan, Trudy; MacLachlan, Malcolm

2008-06-01

Lysaker and Lysaker (Theory and Psychology, 12(2), 207-220, 2002) employ a dialogical theory of self in their writings on self disruption in schizophrenia. It is argued here that this theory could be enriched by incorporating a discursive and social constructionist model of self. Harr's model enables researchers to use subject positions to identify self construction in people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia that the dialogical model, using analysis of narrative, does not as easily recognize. The paper presents a discourse analysis of self construction in eight participants with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Transcripts from semi-structured interviews are analysed, wherein focus falls on how participants construct self in talk through the use of subject positioning. The findings indicate that Harr's theory of self and the implied method of discourse analysis enables more subtle and nuanced constructions of self to be identified than those highlighted by Lysaker and Lysaker (Theory and Psychology, 12(2), 207-220, 2002). The analysis of subject positions revealed that participants constructed self in the form of Harr's (The singular self: An introduction to the psychology of personhood, 1998, London: Sage) self1, self2, and self3. The findings suggest that there may be constructions of self used by people diagnosed with schizophrenia that are not recognized by the current research methods focusing on narrative. The paper argues for the recognition of these constructions and by implication a model of self that takes into account different levels of visibility of self construction in talk.

The Discursive Constitution of the UK Alcohol Problem in "Safe, Sensible, Social": A Discussion of Policy Implications

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hackley, Chris; Bengry-Howell, Andrew; Griffin, Christine; Mistral, Willm; Szmigin, Isabelle

2008-01-01

In this article, we critically reflect on the constitution of the UK's alcohol problem in the government's "Safe, Social, Sensible" policy document, referring to findings from a 3-year ESRC funded study on young people, alcohol and identity. We suggest that discursive themes running throughout "Safe, Sensible, Social" include…

Changing Teachers' Practices through Exploratory Talk in Mathematics: A Discursive Pedagogical Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Murphy, Carol

2015-01-01

This paper presents data collected as part of an intervention research project to develop exploratory talk and collaborative group work with six and seven year-old students in mathematics. A discursive approach was used to analyse and interpret variations in the way that three case-study teachers, involved in the project, managed the group work…

A Meta-Discursive Analysis of Online Comments of Chinese Netizens on Huang Xiaoming's Appropriation of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yan, Xi

2014-01-01

This paper explores the ideologies of English in China through a meta-discursive analysis of Chinese netizens' comments on the performance of English by Huang Xiaoming, a famous Chinese actor. By applying Park and Wee's framework for analysing ideological evaluations of appropriation (i.e. ideologies of allegiance, competence, and authenticity) to…

Rubrics and Reflection: A Discursive Analysis of Observation Debrief Conversations between Novice Teach for America Teachers and Mentors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gabriel, Rachael

2017-01-01

Drawing upon discursive psychology as a theoretical and methodological framework, the author analyzes a set of five postobservation debrief conversations between novice teachers and their mentors. The author presents analysis and findings by highlighting how the interpretative repertoires of the rubric and protocol documents may be used to shape…

Problems in place: Using discursive social psychology to investigate the meanings of seasonal homes

Treesearch

Susan R. Van Patten; Daniel R. Williams

2008-01-01

Researchers continue to explore the nature of place meanings and especially how these meanings are created, disseminated and contested. This paper uses the conceptual framework of discursive social psychology to identify varying interpretive frames homeowners use to characterize the meaning and significance of their seasonal homes as vacation and recreation residences...

Chapter One: What Is Discursive Practice?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Young, Richard F.

2008-01-01

Practice is not meant to be understood as the opposite of theory, DeKeyser wrote; instead, practice involves specific activities in an L2 that learners engage in, deliberately, with the goal of developing knowledge of and skills in the L2. In the book "Discursive Practice in Language Learning and Teaching," by "practice" the author means something…

The Complexity of Bodily Events through an Ethnographer's Gaze: Focusing on the Youngest Children in Preschool

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rossholt, Nina

2009-01-01

This article discusses theoretical, methodological and analytical strategies for researching the material subject. The discussion relates to discursive practices in a preschool setting with children of one and two years of age, where the material subject includes both bodily and discursive practices. Using critical ethnography research, the author…

Talk in Blended-Space Speech Communities: An Exploration of Discursive Practices of a Professional Development Group

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Garvin, Tabitha Ann

2011-01-01

This study is an exploration of alternative teacher professional development. While using symbolic interactionism for a research lens, it characterizes the discursive practices commonly found in formal, informal, and blended-space speech communities based on the talk within a leadership-development program comprised of five female, church-based…

Discursive Contestations and Pluriversal Futures: A Decolonial Analysis of Educational Policies in the United Arab Emirates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aydarova, Elena

2017-01-01

Most research on global transformations in education has focused on the actions of political and economic elites. As a result, attempts to contest and subvert globally circulated policies at subnational levels have received less attention. To address this gap, this study focuses on discursive contestations around educational reforms in the United…

The Organic Foods System: Its Discursive Achievements and Prospects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nowacek, David M.; Nowacek, Rebecca S.

2008-01-01

Taking the emergence of the organic foods system as a case study, the authors aim to demonstrate both how the discursive richness of the organic foods system offers a challenge to the traditional operations of the market and how activity systems theory as understood in English studies can productively be tied to and enriched by theories of social…

"Shut up and Calculate": The Available Discursive Positions in Quantum Physics Courses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johansson, Anders; Andersson, Staffan; Salminen-Karlsson, Minna; Elmgren, Maja

2018-01-01

Educating new generations of physicists is often seen as a matter of attracting good students, teaching them physics and making sure that they stay at the university. Sometimes, questions are also raised about what could be done to increase diversity in recruitment. Using a discursive perspective, in this study of three introductory quantum…

The End of Innocence: Historiography and Representation in the Discursive Practice of LD

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Artiles, Alfredo J.

2004-01-01

In this article, I discuss two interrelated sets of challenges that the discursive practice of learning disability (LD) will need to address, namely, issues associated with the development of a historiography of special education and a more complex understanding of representation issues. I use social theory to address these challenges and raise…

Essentialism, historical construction, and social influence: representations of Pomakness in majority talk in Western Thrace (Greece).

PubMed

Figgou, Lia

2013-12-01

Social psychological research has been particularly interested to study essentialism in the construction of social categories and to manifest its potential consequences in intergroup attitudes. Drawing upon this literature, the present study focuses on the argumentative resources employed to construct ethnic categories in a specific rhetorical context: focus group discussions between majority Greek educators about the minority group of Pomaks, historically residing in Western Thrace (Greece). Discussions were framed as an attempt to capture the particularities of minority education and data were analysed by the use of tools and concepts of discursive and rhetorical psychology. Analysis indicates that participants have multiple and complex recourses available to construct Pomakness. Representations of Pomakness as an essential a-historical entity coexist with conceptions of category membership and identification as a result of certain historical conditions and processes of social influence. Essential and de-essential category constructions are approached as rhetorically situated, oriented towards specific rhetorical ends in specific argumentative contexts. They are also considered, however, to be nested within a complex and dynamic intergroup context which reflects the ideological contradictions of the Greek policy towards the minority and which constitutes (but it is also reconstituted by) shifting group definitions and boundaries. © 2012 The British Psychological Society.

Challenging social myths and stereotypes of women and aging: heterosexual women talk about sex.

PubMed

Hinchliff, Sharron; Gott, Merryn

2008-01-01

Cultural representations of aging and sexuality combine to paint a particular picture of mid and later life for women: menopause is constructed as a time when women either lose or renew their interest in sex, and later life a time when sexual activity no longer assumes importance yet remains vital to healthy aging. This article examines the importance of sexual activity to "older" women, paying particular attention to how they negotiate such representations. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 women aged 50 and older recruited from Sheffield, UK. A material-discursive analysis revealed that whilst participants rejected the asexual discourse of aging they accepted it for women older than themselves. They constructed women per se as sexually complex, in comparison to men, making sexual activity "risky business" for women, and positioned their own sexual desire as responsive, either to a man's sexual desire or to their own hormones. Finally, sexual activity was constructed as having psychological and physiological benefits for couples within committed relationships. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for research, theory and clinical practice.

Self-efficacy: a useful construct to promote physical activity in people with stable chronic heart failure.

PubMed

Du, HuiYun; Everett, Bronwyn; Newton, Phillip J; Salamonson, Yenna; Davidson, Patricia M

2012-02-01

To explore the conceptual underpinnings of self-efficacy to address the barriers to participating in physical activity and propose a model of intervention. The benefits of physical activity in reducing cardiovascular risk have led to evidence-based recommendations for patients with heart disease, including those with chronic heart failure. However, adherence to best practice recommendations is often suboptimal, particularly in those individuals who experience high symptom burden and feel less confident to undertake physical activity. Self-efficacy is the degree of confidence an individual has in his/her ability to perform behaviour under several specific circumstances. Four factors influence an individual's level of self-efficacy: (1) past performance, (2) vicarious experience, (3) verbal persuasion and (4) physiological arousal. Discursive. Using the method of a discursive paper, this article seeks to explore the conceptual underpinnings of self-efficacy to address the barriers to participating in physical activity and proposes a model of intervention, the Home-Heart-Walk, to promote physical activity and monitor functional status. Implementing effective interventions to promote physical activities require appreciation of factors impacting on behaviour change. Addressing concepts relating to self-efficacy in physical activity interventions may promote participation and adherence in the longer term. The increasing burden of chronic disease and the emphasis on self-management strategies underscore the importance of promoting adherence to recommendations, such as physical activity. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Understanding the meaning and role of gifts given to Ugandan mothers in maternity care settings: 'The help they give when they've seen how different you are'.

PubMed

Rudrum, Sarah; Brown, Helen; Oliffe, John L

2016-11-01

The provision of gifts to new mothers in Uganda is laden with significance that varies by the social location of the giver and receiver and the context and conditions under which the gift is made available. Here, we examine the act of gift giving and receiving within a Ugandan maternity care setting, describing the connections between these material objects and social relations. A study investigating the social organisation of maternity care in post-conflict northern Uganda found that gift-giving to new mothers functioned to create a material and discursive context wherein women's desire to access these goods was leveraged to create an incentive to attend formal maternity care during pregnancy and for delivery. In this article we describe the material and discursive processes surrounding gift-giving to new mothers in this global South health care setting. This article contributes critical analyses of the function of gifts in healthcare settings as constructing shared identities, social differences and normative values about health citizenship, and an incentive politic that affects equitable access to maternity care. Drawing on intersectional theory and analysis of how specific practices function ideologically to reward or incentivise pregnant women, we integrate material culture studies into the sociology of women's reproductive health. © 2016 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.

Troubling distinctions: a semiotics of the nursing/technology relationship.

PubMed

Sandelowski, M

1999-09-01

I consider the discursive practices that have served conceptually and ontologically to trouble the boundaries between nursing and technology: between nurse/human/subject and machine/non-human/object. Nursing and technology have been semiotically related largely by two processes: (a) by the metaphor that depicts nursing as technology and (b) by opposition, or as not like and even in conflict with technology. Less frequently but no less significantly, nursing and technology have been semiotically linked (c) by the metaphor that depicts technology as nursing and (d) by metonymy, or by word or picture juxtapositions of nursing with technology. The troubling distinctions between nursing and technology suggest yet another reason why the construction of difference continues to elude nursing.

The interplay between structure and agency in the enactment of STEM policy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Martins, Isabel; Pinhão, Francine; Vilanova, Rita

2017-12-01

In their paper, Hoeg and Bencze argue that current STEM curriculum guidelines prioritise the training of a workforce in detriment of a democratically grounded education for citizenship. We agree that there is an insufficient questioning about which type of citizenship STEM curricula would favour and wish to contribute to this debate by (1) problematising different meanings and aspects of citizenship in different models of democracy and (2) exploring the dialectical nature of structure and agency in the discursive construction of educational (policy) discourse. We also discuss results from recent empirical research about teachers' ideas on citizenship education in order to challenge views that assume a linearity between educational policy and its enactment.

Unethical conduct by the nurse: a critical discourse analysis of Nurses Tribunal inquiries.

PubMed

Dixon, Kathleen A

2013-08-01

The aim of this study was to uncover and critically examine hidden assumptions that underpin the findings of nurses' unethical conduct arising from inquiries conducted by the Nurses Tribunal in New South Wales. This was a qualitative study located within a post-structural theoretical framework. Transcripts of five inquiries conducted between 1998 and 2003 were analysed using critical discourse analysis. The findings revealed two dominant discourses that were drawn upon in the inquiries to construct nurses' conduct as unethical. These were discourses of trust and accountability. The way the nurses were spoken about during the inquiries was shaped by normalising judgements that were used to discursively position the nurse through narrative.

Movement as utopia.

PubMed

Couton, Philippe; López, José Julián

2009-10-01

Opposition to utopianism on ontological and political grounds has seemingly relegated it to a potentially dangerous form of antiquated idealism. This conclusion is based on a restrictive view of utopia as excessively ordered panoptic discursive constructions. This overlooks the fact that, from its inception, movement has been central to the utopian tradition. The power of utopianism indeed resides in its ability to instantiate the tension between movement and place that has marked social transformations in the modern era. This tension continues in contemporary discussions of movement-based social processes, particularly international migration and related identity formations, such as open borders transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. Understood as such, utopia remains an ongoing and powerful, albeit problematic instrument of social and political imagination.

Gender Effects in Assessment of Economic Knowledge and Understanding: Differences among Undergraduate Business and Economics Students in Germany, Japan, and the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brückner, Sebastian; Förster, Manuel; Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, Olga; Happ, Roland; Walstad, William B.; Yamaoka, Michio; Asano, Tadayoshi

2015-01-01

Gender effects in large-scale assessments have become an increasingly important research area within and across countries. Yet few studies have linked differences in assessment results of male and female students in higher education to construct-relevant features of the target construct. This paper examines gender effects on students' economic…

"Is It Really for Talking?": The Implications of Associating a Minority Language with the School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith-Christmas, Cassie

2017-01-01

This paper examines how caregivers in a bilingual family discursively link Gaelic to a school context when interacting with Maggie, an eight year-old who is currently enrolled in Gaelic Medium Education on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. The paper argues that the caregivers achieve this discursive framing primarily through treating Gaelic as a…

English Education for Young Children in South Korea: Not Just a Collective Neurosis of English Fever!

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jahng, Kyung Eun

2011-01-01

The aim of this article is to rethink English education for young children in South Korea through exploring a great variety of complex, interrelated terrains in terms of its emergence and popularity in an era of globalisation. I critically examine the relevance of discursive and non-discursive conditions derived from social, political, economic,…

What Do We Learn in Smethwick Village? Computer Games, Media Learning and Discursive Confusion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McDougall, Julian

2007-01-01

This article presents findings from research exploring the intervention made by the introduction of computer games as an object of study in Media Studies at AS level in England. The outcome is a range of discursive data in the form of teachers and students from two English colleges talking about their experiences of this curriculum encounter. This…

Performing Academic Practice: Using the Master Class to Build Postgraduate Discursive Competences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baerenholdt, Jorgen Ole; Gregson, Nicky; Everts, Jonathan; Granas, Brynhild; Healey, Ruth L.

2010-01-01

How can we find ways of training PhD students in academic practices, while reflexively analysing how academic practices are performed? The paper's answer to this question is based on evaluations from a British-Nordic master class. The paper discusses how master classes can be used to train the discursive skills required for academic discussion,…

Spaces for Geometric Work: Figural, Instrumental, and Discursive Geneses of Reasoning in a Technological Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gómez-Chacón, Inés Ma; Kuzniak, Alain

2015-01-01

The main goal of this research was to assess the effect of a dynamic environment on relationships between the three geneses (figural, instrumental, and discursive) of Spaces for Geometric Work. More specifically, it was to determine whether the interactive geometry program GeoGebra could play a specific role in the geometric work of future…

Achieving Ethnic Minority Students’ Inclusion: A Flemish School’s Discursive Practices Countering the Quasi-Market Pressure to Exclude

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zanoni, Patrizia; Mampaey, Jelle

2013-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to identify how ethnically diverse schools can discursively maintain a good reputation. Reputation allows attracting the mixed student population necessary to achieve inclusion or closing the gap between the attainment of ethnic majority and minority students. In semi-market educational systems where students are free…

[Between caring and monitoring: ambiguities and contradictions in the discourse of a female penitentiary officer].

PubMed

Barcinski, Mariana; Altenbernd, Bibiana; Campani, Cristiane

2014-07-01

The scope of this paper was to establish how the discourse of a female penitentiary officer working in a prison for women reflects, in different ways, the inherent contradiction of prisons, namely their double mission of punishing and resocializing criminals. The data collected in a female prison in Rio Grande do Sul were evaluated using Critical Discourse Analysis, which seeks to understand how discursive productions reflect social power relations. The analyses show that this officer's practice is based simultaneously on punitive and resocializing ideologies, expressed in contradictory feelings of anger and affection towards incarcerated women. Results point to the centrality of gender in the relationship established between officers and interns. Thus, the fact of being a female officer caring and monitoring other women makes this daily relationship even more complex. This complexity extrapolates the limits imposed by prisons.

Gendered Construction: A Portfolio Extravaganza

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goins, Terilyn J.

2007-01-01

Even through simplistic nursery rhymes, communication provides a powerful medium through which people formulate and create impressions, images, and ideologies. Communication, verbal and nonverbal, clearly plays a significant role in individual gender construction. Through words and action, people create meaning for others and themselves. One's…

Discursive Mechanisms and Human Agency in Language Policy Formation: Negotiating Bilingualism and Parallel Language Use at a Swedish University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Källkvist, Marie; Hult, Francis M.

2016-01-01

In the wake of the enactment of Sweden's Language Act in 2009 and in the face of the growing presence of English, Swedish universities have been called upon by the Swedish Higher Education Authority to craft their own language policy documents. This study focuses on the discursive negotiation of institutional bilingualism by a language policy…

The Interactional Accomplishment of Not Knowing in Elementary School Science and Mathematics: Implications for Classroom Performance Assessment Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reis, Giuliano; Barwell, Richard

2013-01-01

The day-to-day business of being a science or mathematics teacher involves the continuous assessment of students. This, in turn, is an inherently discursive process. The aim of the present study is to examine some of the specific discursive practices through which science and mathematics knowing is jointly produced through classroom interaction.…

Homophobic Slurs and Public Apologies: The Discursive Struggle over "Fag/Maricon" in Public Discourse

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cashman, Holly R.

2012-01-01

A handful of recent incidents hints at an ideological struggle over the use of the English word "fag(got)" and the Spanish word "maricon" in public discourse. This article examines the discursive and ideological struggle over the terms through the comparison of two cases in which Spanish/English bilingual Latinos in the U. S. use what might be…

Transmasculine people's vocal situations: a critical review of gender-related discourses and empirical data.

PubMed

Azul, David

2015-01-01

Transmasculine people assigned female sex at birth but who do not identify with this classification have traditionally received little consideration in the voice literature. Some voice researchers and clinicians suggest that transmasculine people do not need attention because testosterone treatment leads to a satisfactory masculinization of their voice organs and voices. Others, however, argue that transmasculine people are a heterogeneous group whose members might not share the same body type, gender identity or desire for medical approaches to gender transitioning. Therefore, testosterone-induced voice changes may not necessarily meet the needs and expectations of all transmasculine people. To evaluate the gender-related discursive and empirical data about transmasculine people's vocal situations to identify gaps in the current state of knowledge and to make suggestions for future voice research and clinical practice. A comprehensive review of peer-reviewed academic and clinical literature was conducted. Publications were identified by searching seven electronic databases and bibliographies of relevant articles. Thirty-one publications met inclusion criteria. Discourses and empirical data were analysed thematically. Potential problem areas that transmasculine people may experience were identified and the quality of evidence appraised. The extent and quality of voice research conducted with transmasculine people so far was found to be limited. There was mixed evidence to suggest that transmasculine people's vocal situations could be regarded as problematic. The diversity that characterizes the transmasculine population received little attention and the complexity of the factors that contribute to a successful or unsuccessful vocal communication of gender in this group appeared to be under-researched. While most transmasculine people treated with testosterone can expect a lowering of their pitch, it remains unclear whether the extent of the pitch change is enough to result in a voice that is recognized by others as male. More research into the different factors affecting transmasculine people's vocal situations that takes account of the diversity within the population is needed. © 2014 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Bending Gender, Ending Gender: Theoretical Foundations for Social Work Practice with the Transgender Community

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burdge, Barb J.

2007-01-01

Gender is a ubiquitous social construct that wields power over every individual in our society. The traditional dichotomous gender paradigm is oppressive, especially for transgendered people whose sense of themselves as gendered people is incongruent with the gender they were assigned at birth. Transgendered individuals are targeted for…

Competency-based medical education: the discourse of infallibility.

PubMed

Boyd, Victoria A; Whitehead, Cynthia R; Thille, Patricia; Ginsburg, Shiphra; Brydges, Ryan; Kuper, Ayelet

2018-01-01

Over the last two decades, competency-based frameworks have been internationally adopted as the primary educational approach in medicine. Yet competency-based medical education (CBME) remains contested in the academic literature. We look broadly at the nature of this debate to explore how it may shape scholars' understanding of CBME, and its implications for medical education research and practice. In doing so, we deconstruct unarticulated discourses and assumptions embedded in the CBME literature. We assembled an archive of literature focused on CBME. The archive dates from 1996, the publication year of the first CanMEDS Physician Competency Framework. We then conducted a Foucauldian critical discourse analysis (CDA) to delineate the dominant discourses underpinning the literature. CDA examines the intersections of language, social practices, knowledge and power relations to highlight how entrenched ways of thinking influence what can or cannot be said about a topic. Detractors of CBME have advanced an array of conceptual critiques. Proponents have often responded with a recurring discursive strategy that minimises these critiques and deflects attention from the underlying concept of the competency-based approach. As part of this process, conceptual concerns are reframed as two practical problems: implementation and interpretation. Yet the assertion that these are the construct's primary concerns was often unsupported by empirical evidence. These practices contribute to a discourse of infallibility of CBME. In uncovering the discourse of infallibility, we explore how it can silence critical voices and hinder a rigorous examination of the competency-based approach. These discursive practices strengthen CBME by constructing it as infallible in the literature. We propose re-approaching the dialogue surrounding CBME as a starting point for empirical investigation, driven by the aim to broaden scholars' understanding of its design, development and implementation in medical education. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and The Association for the Study of Medical Education.

Gender Justice and School Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gao, Desheng

2009-01-01

Gender justice includes three basic dimensions: gender equality, respect for difference, and free choice. In reality, schools construct and reproduce the gender injustice of the social culture through multiple dimensions that include the visible and the invisible curriculum, and the teacher's behaviour. In terms of gender justice, the social…

Changes in science classrooms resulting from collaborative action research initiatives

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Oh, Phil Seok

Collaborative action research was undertaken over two years between a Korean science teacher and science education researchers at the University of Iowa. For the purpose of realizing science learning as envisioned by constructivist principles, Group-Investigations were implemented three or five times per project year. In addition, the second year project enacted Peer Assessments among students. Student perceptions of their science classrooms, as measured by the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES), provided evidence that the collaborative action research was successful in creating constructivist learning environments. Student attitudes toward science lessons, as examined by the Enjoyment of Science Lessons Scale (ESLS), indicated that the action research also contributed to developing more positive attitudes of students about science learning. Discourse analysis was conducted on video-recordings of in-class presentations and discussions. The results indicated that students in science classrooms which were moving toward constructivist learning environments engaged in such discursive practices as: (1) Communicating their inquiries to others, (2) Seeking and providing information through dialogues, and (3) Negotiating conflicts in their knowledge and beliefs. Based on these practices, science learning was viewed as the process of constructing knowledge and understanding of science as well as the process of engaging in scientific inquiry and discourse. The teacher's discursive practices included: (1) Wrapping up student presentations, (2) Addressing misconceptions, (3) Answering student queries, (4) Coaching, (5) Assessing and advising, (6) Guiding students discursively into new knowledge, and (7) Scaffolding. Science teaching was defined as situated acts of the teacher to facilitate the learning process. In particular, when the classrooms became more constructivist, the teacher intervened more frequently and carefully in student activities to fulfill a variety of pedagogical functions. Students perceived Group-Investigations and Peer Assessments as positive in that they contributed to realizing constructivist features in their classrooms. The students also reported that they gained several learning outcomes through Group-Investigations, including more positive attitudes, new knowledge, greater learning capabilities, and improved self-esteem. However, the Group-Investigation and Peer Assessment methods were perceived as negative and problematic by those who had rarely been exposed to such inquiry-based, student-centered approaches.

“All of Those Things We Don't Eat”: A Culture-Centered Approach to Dietary Health Meanings for Asian Indians Living in the United States

PubMed Central

Koenig, Christopher J.; Dutta, Mohan J.; Kandula, Namratha; Palaniappan, Latha

2015-01-01

This article applies a culture-centered approach to analyze the dietary health meanings for Asian Indians living in the United States. The data were collected as part of a health promotion program evaluation designed to help Asian Indians reduce their risk of chronic disease. Community members who used two aspects of the program participated in two focus groups to learn about their health care experiences and to engage them in dialogue about how culture impacts their overall health. Using constructionist grounded theory, we demonstrate that one aspect of culture, the discourses around routine dietary choice, is an important, but under-recognized, aspect of culture that influences community members’ experiences with health care. We theorize community members’ dietary health meanings operate discursively through a dialectic tension between homogeneity and heterogeneity, situated amid culture, structure, and agency. Participants enacted discursive homogeneity when they affirmed dietary health meanings around diet as an important means through which members of the community maintain a sense of continuity of their identity while differentiating them from others. Participants enacted discursive heterogeneity when they voiced dietary health meanings that differentiated community members from one another due to unique life-course trajectories and other membership affiliations. Through this dialectic, community members manage unique Asian Indian identities and create meanings of health and illness in and through their discourses around routine dietary choice. Through making these discursive health meanings audible, we foreground how community members’ agency is discursively enacted and to make understandable how discourses of dietary practice influence the therapeutic alliance between primary care providers and members of a minority community. PMID:22364189

"All of those things we don't eat": a culture-centered approach to dietary health meanings for Asian Indians living in the United States.

PubMed

Koenig, Christopher J; Dutta, Mohan J; Kandula, Namratha; Palaniappan, Latha

2012-01-01

This article applies a culture-centered approach to analyze the dietary health meanings for Asian Indians living in the United States. The data were collected as part of a health promotion program evaluation designed to help Asian Indians reduce their risk of chronic disease. Community members who used two aspects of the program participated in two focus groups to learn about their health care experiences and to engage them in dialogue about how culture impacts their overall health. Using constructionist grounded theory, we demonstrate that one aspect of culture, the discourses around routine dietary choice, is an important, but underrecognized, aspect of culture that influences community members' experiences with health care. We theorize community members' dietary health meanings operate discursively through a dialectic tension between homogeneity and heterogeneity, situated amid culture, structure, and agency. Participants enacted discursive homogeneity when they affirmed dietary health meanings around diet as an important means through which members of the community maintain a sense of continuity of their identity while differentiating them from others. Participants enacted discursive heterogeneity when they voiced dietary health meanings that differentiated community members from one another due to unique life-course trajectories and other membership affiliations. Through this dialectic, community members manage unique Asian Indian identities and create meanings of health and illness in and through their discourses around routine dietary choice. Through making these discursive health meanings audible, we foreground how community members' agency is discursively enacted and to make understandable how discourses of dietary practice influence the therapeutic alliance between primary care providers and members of a minority community.

Culture and the social construction of gender: mapping the intersection with mental health.

PubMed

Andermann, Lisa

2010-01-01

The social construction of gender is an important concept for better understanding the determinants of mental health in women and men. Going beyond physical and physiological differences and the traditional biomedical approach, interdisciplinary study of the complex factors related to culture and society, power and politics is necessary to be able to find solutions to situations of disparity in mental health, related to both prevalence of disorders, availability and response to treatment. Gender inequality continues to be a source of suffering for many women around the world, and this can lead to adverse mental health outcomes. This review focuses on developments in the literature on culture, gender and mental health over the past decade, focusing on themes around the social construction of gender, mental health and the media, a look at cultural competence through a gender lens, gender and the body, providing some examples of the intersection between mental health and gender in low-income countries as well as the more developed world, and the impact of migration and resettlement on mental health. At the clinical level, using a bio-psycho-social-spiritual model that can integrate and negotiate between both traditional and biomedical perspectives is necessary, combined with use of a cultural formulation that takes gender identity into account. Research involving both qualitative and quantitative perspectives, and in many cases an ethnographic framework, is essential in tackling these global issues.

Working with Gender Pedagogics at 14 Swedish Preschools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sandstrom, Margareta; Stier, Jonas; Sandberg, Anette

2013-01-01

In Sweden, gender pedagogics has been on the political agenda the last decade. Consequently, gender matters have been given much attention in Swedish preschools, and specialized pedagogues have also been trained to counteract socially constructed gender distinctions. Therefore, we have explored the enactment of gender pedagogics. We asked 17…

Let's talk about society: A Critical Discourse Analysis of sociology courses in pre-registration nursing.

PubMed

Koch, Tomas F; Leal, Valentina J; Ayala, Ricardo A

2016-01-01

The discussion of teaching and learning in nursing has been prolific. Whereas most of the debate tends to focus on core contents of nursing programmes, little has been discussed about the teaching in 'supporting subjects' with relevance to both nursing education and nursing practice. This article offers a perspective on sociology scholarship for applied professions by using the case of nursing programmes. Syllabus is a rich source of data, and in its representational capacity it becomes both a discursive construction and a vehicle of ideology. Accordingly, we present a Critical Discourse Analysis of syllabi of nursing schools in Chile as to identify core contents and ideologies, and implied challenges for nursing education. We argue that while the syllabus as a discourse discloses a significant cleavage, the biggest challenge is precisely to challenge the ideologies constructed by and embedded in the syllabi. Our reflection thus points to a better interdisciplinary dialogue as to enhance the actual contribution of sociology to nursing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In and out of Place: Exploring the Discursive Effects of Teachers' Talk about Outdoor Education in Secondary Schools in New Zealand

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mikaels, Jonas; Backman, Erik; Lundvall, Suzanne

2016-01-01

The purpose of this article is to explore and problematise teachers' talk about outdoor education in New Zealand. The focus is on what can be said, how it is said and the discursive effects of such ways of speaking. The inquiry draws on Foucauldian theoretical insights to analyse interview transcripts derived from semi-structured interviews with…

"You've Got to Teach People that Racism Is Wrong and Then They Won't Be Racist": Curricular Representations and Young People&'s Understandings of "Race" and Racism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bryan, Audrey

2012-01-01

This paper critically examines the discursive (mis) representation of "race" and racism in the formal curriculum. Combining qualitative data derived from interviews with 35 young people who were enrolled in a Dublin-based, ethnically diverse secondary school, with a critical discursive analysis of 20 textbooks, the paper explores…

An Analysis of Methods Used to Examine Gender Differences in Computer-Related Behavior.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kay, Robin

1992-01-01

Review of research investigating gender differences in computer-related behavior examines statistical and methodological flaws. Issues addressed include sample selection, sample size, scale development, scale quality, the use of univariate and multivariate analyses, regressional analysis, construct definition, construct testing, and the…

Deconstructing national leadership: politicians' accounts of electoral success and failure in the Irish Lisbon Treaty referenda.

PubMed

Burns, Michele; Stevenson, Clifford

2013-03-01

The Self Categorization approach to national leadership proposes that leaders rhetorically construct national identity as essentialized and inevitable in order to consensualize and mobilize the population. In contrast, discursive studies have demonstrated how national politicians flexibly construct the nation to manage their own accountability in local interactions, though this in turn has neglected broader leadership processes. The present paper brings both approaches together to examine how and when national politicians construct versions of national identity in order to account for their failure as well as success in mobilizing the electorate. Eight semi-structured conversational style interviews were conducted with a strategic sample of eight leading Irish politicians on the subject of the 2008/2009 Irish Lisbon Treaty referenda. Using a Critical Discourse Psychology approach, the hegemonic repertoire of the 'settled will' of the informed and consensualized Irish nation was identified across all interviews. Politicians either endorsed the 'settled will' repertoire as evidence of their successful leadership, or rejected the repertoire by denying the rationality or unity of the populace to account for their failure. Our results suggest national identity is only constructed as essentialized and inevitable to the extent that it serves a strategic political purpose. © 2011 The British Psychological Society.

Notions of Gender in the Construction of English.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thomas, Kim

1991-01-01

Feminism and gender in the construction of English as a university discipline and the historical development of English are discussed. Generally, English is studied by women and taught by men. The teaching of English today is examined through interviews with four university English department lecturers in the United Kingdom. (SLD)

Visualizing Gender with Fifth Grade Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, David W., Jr.; Albers, Peggy

2014-01-01

How do fifth-grade students in a gifted class construct understandings of the opposite sex? In what ways do these constructions manifest in the visual texts created in literacy and language arts classrooms? This qualitative study integrated visual arts to understand how fifth-grade gifted students represented and perceived gender roles. Using…

Nurses' discourse in contraceptive prescribing: an analysis using Foucault's 'procedures of exclusion'.

PubMed

Hayter, Mark

2007-05-01

This paper is a report of an analysis of the discourse about contraceptive efficacy and side effects used by nurses when prescribing contraception. All women seeking contraception should be informed of the efficacy and potential adverse effects of the particular method they are considering. This information facilitates an informed choice. Women also require this information in order to monitor for any side effects. Paradoxically, side effects are also a key factor in reducing adherence with contraceptive regimens. However, there is no literature that explores specifically how this issue is addressed in clinical consultations, or places these practices in a theoretical context. Forty-nine consultations between nurses and women in sexual health clinics were audio-recorded during 2002. Data were subject to a discourse analysis using Foucault's 'procedures of exclusion' to explore the discursive construction of contraceptive efficacy and side effects The nurses employed specific discursive strategies when discussing contraception. When addressing efficacy, discourse centred on medico-statistical facts, but side effects were described in lay terms that minimized their severity. Nurses contextualized contraceptive side effects within potential problems that women might experience in pregnancy, and also attempted to 'normalize' contraceptive-related problems. Discourse and its deployment play a key role in practitioner-client relationships that sexual health nurses need to become more aware of how they discuss clinical issues about contraception with women. Clinical data on contraceptive side-effects are present in the literature, and it is important that sexual health nurses use this to help women make truly informed decisions.

Ideologies of moral exclusion: a critical discursive reframing of depersonalization, delegitimization and dehumanization.

PubMed

Tileagă, Cristian

2007-12-01

This paper focuses on some of the issues that arise when one treats notions such as depersonalization, delegitimization and dehumanization as social practices. It emphasizes the importance of: (a) understanding depersonalizing, delegitimizing and dehumanizing constructions as embedded in descriptions of located spatial activities and moral standings in the world and (b) invoking and building a socio-moral order linked to notions of lesser humanity or non-humanity, (spatial) transgression and abjection. These concerns are illustrated by taking talk on Romanies as a case in point from interviews with Romanian middle-class professionals. It is argued that a focus on description rather than explanation might be more effective in understanding the dynamics of ideologies of moral exclusion.

Disciplinary discourses: rates of cesarean section explained by medicine, midwifery, and feminism.

PubMed

Lee, Amy Su May; Kirkman, Maggie

2008-05-01

In the context of international concern about increasing rates of cesarean sections, we used discourse analysis to examine explanations arising from feminism and the disciplines of medicine and midwifery, and found that each was positioned differently in relation to the rising rates. Medical discourses asserted that doctors are authorities on birth and that, although cesareans are sometimes medically necessary, women recklessly choose unnecessary cesareans against medical advice. Midwifery discourses portrayed medicine as paternalistic toward both women and midwifery, and feminist discourses situated birth and women's bodies in the context of a patriarchally structured society. The findings illustrate the complex ways in which this intervention in birth is discursively constructed, and demonstrate its significance as a site of disciplinary conflict.

How do men's magazines talk about penises?

PubMed

Owen, Craig; Campbell, Christine

2018-02-01

Constructions of masculinity have shifted and changed but the central role of the penis has remained firm. Yet, despite the implications for sexual health, there has been very little research on discourses around penises. The messages men receive about their manhood is apparent in articles in men's magazines. We conducted a discursive analysis of the ways in which penises were discussed in four market leading UK titles: Loaded, Men's Health, GQ and Attitude. Two broad discourses were identified, termed Laddish and Medicalised, both of which create fear-ridden spaces where men are bombarded with unachievable masculine ideals and traumatic examples of mutilated members. We discuss how health psychologists could use the findings to communicate with men about their sexual health needs using this channel.

Non-normative bodies, rationality, and legal personhood.

PubMed

Travis, Mitchell

2014-01-01

This article questions how legal personhood is constructed by law. Elective amputation is used as a way of interrogating the institutional, material, and discursive relations that combine in order to suspend legal personhood. Elective amputation is introduced in terms of medical and psychological explanations. Additionally, the perspective of self-identified elective amputees who choose to share their stories through online blogs is utilised to gain a narrative sense of how these individuals understand and engage with law. In particular, the areas of disability, sexuality, and rationality are used to exemplify law's continuing commitment to normative embodiment as grounds for ascribing legal personhood. © The Author [2014]. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Time and the psychiatric interview: the negotiation of temporal criteria of the depressive disorder.

PubMed

Ziólkowska, Justyna

2014-03-01

In this article, I am concerned with doctors' negotiations of the temporal dimension of the diagnostic criteria of depressive disorders during the first psychiatric interview. The data come from 16 initial psychiatric interviews recorded by doctors in three psychiatric hospitals in Poland. Taking a constructionist view of discourse and psychiatric practices, I shall argue that the discursive practice related to temporal information about patients' illnesses serves in gaining information, which is useful in the medical model of psychiatric diagnosis. The doctors positioned the patients' experiences on the timeline when the illness history was taken and temporal information authenticated the information. Conversely, the patients' current conditions were constructed in a limitless present, which allowed the psychiatrists to remove the relativity.

18 CFR 1.102 - Words denoting number, gender and so forth.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

..., gender and so forth. 1.102 Section 1.102 Conservation of Power and Water Resources FEDERAL ENERGY... Rules of Construction § 1.102 Words denoting number, gender and so forth. In determining the meaning of...) Words of one gender include the other gender. [Order 225, 47 FR 19022, May 3, 1982] ...

Choosing to Lose our Gender Expertise: Queering Sex/Gender in School Settings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DePalma, Renee

2013-01-01

Most people, school teachers and children included, are altogether too sure about what gender is: there are two "opposite" sexes, man and woman, and gender is the inevitable categorical expression of natural sex. Like all commonsense views, however, the gender binary has been socially constructed through normalising discourses that frame…

Theorizing Gender for Community College Research and Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bechtold, Brigitte H.

2008-01-01

Feminist theory uses gender as a lens to evaluate society's institutions and power hierarchies. Gender evolves as a social construction rather than an essential difference between the sexes, and it supports the so-called "hegemony of dominant men" in society. Socialization by gender enables discrimination in gender roles and occupations, and its…

Preschool Work Teams' View of Ways of Working with Gender--Parents' Involvement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karlson, Ingrid; Simonsson, Maria

2008-01-01

Lately the interest to develop a gender-perspective in preschool has grown in Sweden. The aim of this study is to focus on Swedish preschool work teams understanding of gender and gender-sensitive pedagogy and their descriptions of what they actually do to be gender-sensitive preschools. Studies of gender and children often focus construction of…

Framework for Analysis of Mitigation in Courts

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-01-01

present a framework for a pragmatic analysis of mitigation in courts. The study focuses on discursive acts and aspects of discursive acts the purpose...use it is associated with coping (Lazarus, 1999) with (inevitable) negative events or experiences. It is also linked to studies of pragmatics...The concept of ‘hedges’ or ‘metalinguistic operators’ such as ‘more or less’, ‘like’, ‘sort of’ etc. in turn originated in studies on the fuzzy-set

Standards and Stories: The Interactional Work of Informed Choice in Ontario Midwifery Care

PubMed Central

Spoel, Philippa; Mckenzie, Pamela; James, Susan; Hobberlin, Jessica

2013-01-01

This paper uses a discourse-rhetorical approach to analyze how Ontario midwives and their clients interactionally accomplish the healthcare communicative process of «informed choice.» Working with four excerpts from recorded visits between Ontario midwives and women, the analysis focuses on the discursive rendering during informed choice conversations of two contrasting kinds of evidence — professional standards and story-telling — related to potential interventions during labour. We draw on the concepts of discursive hybridity (Sarangi and Roberts 1999) and recontextualization (Linell 1998; Sarangi 1998) to trace the complex and creative ways in which the conversational participants reconstruct the meanings of these evidentiary sources to address their particular care contexts. This analysis shows how, though very different in their forms, both modes of evidence function as hybrid and flexible discursive resources that perform both instrumental and social-relational healthcare work. PMID:24289941

Gender and Adolescent Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perry, David G.; Pauletti, Rachel E.

2011-01-01

This article summarizes and critiques recent trends in research and theory on the role of gender in adolescent development. First, gender differences in key areas of adolescent functioning are reviewed. Second, research on 3 constructs that are especially relevant to the investigation of within-gender individual differences in gender…

SciJourn is magic: construction of a science journalism community of practice

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nicholas, Celeste R.

2017-06-01

This article is the first to describe the discoursal construction of an adolescent community of practice (CoP) in a non-school setting. CoPs can provide optimal learning environments. The adolescent community centered around science journalism and positioned itself dichotomously in relationship to school literacy practices. The analysis focuses on recordings from a panel-style research interview from an early implementation of the Science Literacy Through Science Journalism (SciJourn) project. Researchers trained high school students participating in a youth development program to write science news articles. Students engaged in the authentic practices of professional science journalists, received feedback from a professional editor, and submitted articles for publication. I used a fine-grained critical discourse analysis of genre, discourse, and style to analyze student responses about differences between writing in SciJourn and in school. Students described themselves as agentic in SciJourn and passive in school, using an academic writing discourse of deficit to describe schooling experiences. They affiliated with and defined a SciJourn CoP, constructing positive journalistic identities therein. Educators are encouraged to develop similar CoPs. The discursive features presented may be used to monitor the development of communities of practice in a variety of settings.

"Queerying" Gender: Heteronormativity in Early Childhood Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robinson, Kerry H.

2005-01-01

This paper explores heteronormativity and argues for the "queerying" of gender in early childhood education. The author argues, utilising Butler's theory of performativity and heterosexual matrix, that the construction of gender in young children's lives requires an analysis of the normalising practices in which gendered identities are…

Music, Reason, Democracy, and the Construction of Gender

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Woodford, Paul G.

2001-01-01

Many so-called traditionalist musicologists and music educators would agree that one of the aims of education in democratic society should be to assist students, regardless of gender, class, ethnicity, or culture, and to the extent that it is possible, to construct their own musical and other differences free from excessive coercion. However,…

A Gender Wellbeing Composite Indicator: The Best-Worst Global Evaluation Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dominguez-Serrano, Monica; Blancas, Francisco Javier

2011-01-01

In this paper we present a new global evaluation methodology for constructing composite indicators. Given the limitations in the construction of wellbeing indicators that include a gender perspective, this paper proposes separate measures for men and women, using new linear programming models to improve the traditional Data Envelopment Analysis…

Picture My Gender(s): Using Interactive Media to Engage Students in Theories of Gender Construction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sargent, Carey; Corse, Sarah M.

2013-01-01

We present an exercise on "doing gender" that uses digital media to create an opportunity for interactive learning. Students create photo essays on gender performances in everyday life and then present their photo essays to their peers. This exercise allows undergraduates to engage in "real-life" learning regarding the socially…

"Shut up and calculate": the available discursive positions in quantum physics courses

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Johansson, Anders; Andersson, Staffan; Salminen-Karlsson, Minna; Elmgren, Maja

2018-03-01

Educating new generations of physicists is often seen as a matter of attracting good students, teaching them physics and making sure that they stay at the university. Sometimes, questions are also raised about what could be done to increase diversity in recruitment. Using a discursive perspective, in this study of three introductory quantum physics courses at two Swedish universities, we instead ask what it means to become a physicist, and whether certain ways of becoming a physicist and doing physics is privileged in this process. Asking the question of what discursive positions are made accessible to students, we use observations of lectures and problem solving sessions together with interviews with students to characterize the discourse in the courses. Many students seem to have high expectations for the quantum physics course and generally express that they appreciate the course more than other courses. Nevertheless, our analysis shows that the ways of being a "good quantum physics student" are limited by the dominating focus on calculating quantum physics in the courses. We argue that this could have negative consequences both for the education of future physicists and the discipline of physics itself, in that it may reproduce an instrumental "shut up and calculate"-culture of physics, as well as an elitist physics education. Additionally, many students who take the courses are not future physicists, and the limitation of discursive positions may also affect these students significantly.

Does gender contribute to heterogeneity in criteria for cannabis abuse and dependence? Results from the national epidemiological survey on alcohol and related conditions.

PubMed

Agrawal, Arpana; Lynskey, Michael T

2007-05-11

Previous research has noted that a unidimensional latent construct underlies criteria for cannabis abuse and dependence. However, no study to date has explored whether gender contributes to heterogeneity in the latent abuse and dependence construct and furthermore, whether after accounting for differences in the mean scores of abuse and dependence across genders, there is any evidence for heterogeneity in the individual abuse and dependence criteria. The present study utilizes data on criteria for cannabis abuse and dependence from a large, nationally representative sample (National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions) of 8172 lifetime cannabis users to investigate whether gender contributes to heterogeneity in the underlying construct of cannabis abuse and dependence, and in each individual criterion as well. Analyses, all of which were conducted in MPlus, included factor analysis, as well as MIMIC and multiple-group models for an examination of dimensionality and gender heterogeneity, respectively. Results favor a unidimensional construct for cannabis abuse/dependence, as seen in prior research. We also identify two abuse (legal and hazard) and two dependence (quit and problems) criteria, which show significant gender heterogeneity with the abuse criteria exhibiting higher thresholds in women and the dependence criteria in men. We conclude that the criteria that serve as indicators of DSM-IV cannabis abuse and dependence do not function identically in men and women and that certain criteria (e.g. hazardous use) require further refinement.

The Future of the Gender System: An Interventionist Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harkness, Sarah K.; Hall, Deborah L.

2010-01-01

Gender is one of the primary organizers of social life. Given this importance, gender has been studied from multiple vantages, including biological, sociocognitive, interpersonal, network, and institutional perspectives. The diversity of these approaches illustrates the complex nature of gender as a multilevel social construction and that the…

Reading Gender Relations and Sexuality: Preteens Speak Out

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moffatt, Lyndsay; Norton, Bonny

2008-01-01

Recent research has documented the persistence of unequal gender relations and homophobia in young people's lives. Feminist post-structural theories of gender and socio-cultural theories of learning suggest educators need to understand students' constructions of gender relations, masculine/feminine desires, and sexuality if they hope to challenge…

Gender and Education. An Encyclopedia. Volume I

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bank, Barbara J., Ed.

2007-01-01

In this two volume set, educators explore the intersection of gender and education. Their entries deal with educational theories, research, curricula, practices, personnel, and policies, but also with variations in the gendering of education across historical and cultural contexts. The various contributors discuss gender as a social construction.…

Beyond a dichotomous view of the concepts of 'sex' and 'gender' focus group discussions among gender researchers at a medical faculty.

PubMed

Alex, Lena; Fjellman Wiklund, Anncristine; Lundman, Berit; Christianson, Monica; Hammarström, Anne

2012-01-01

The concepts of 'sex' and 'gender' are both of vital importance in medicine and health sciences. However, the meaning of these concepts has seldom been discussed in the medical literature. The aim of this study was to explore what the concepts of 'sex' and 'gender' meant for gender researchers based in a medical faculty. Sixteen researchers took part in focus group discussions. The analysis was performed in several steps. The participating researchers read the text and discussed ideas for analysis in national and international workshops. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The authors performed independent preliminary analyses, which were further developed and intensively discussed between the authors. The analysis of meanings of the concepts of 'sex' and 'gender' for gender researchers based in a medical faculty resulted in three categories; "Sex as more than biology", with the subcategories 'sex' is not simply biological, 'sex' as classification, and 'sex' as fluid and changeable; "Gender as a multiplicity of power-related constructions", with the subcategories: 'gender' as constructions, 'gender' power dimensions, and 'gender' as doing femininities and masculinities; "Sex and gender as interwoven", with the subcategories: 'sex' and 'gender' as inseparable and embodying 'sex' and 'gender'. Gender researchers within medicine pointed out the importance of looking beyond a dichotomous view of the concepts of 'sex' and 'gender'. The perception of the concepts was that 'sex' and 'gender' were intertwined. Further research is needed to explore how 'sex' and 'gender' interact.

Gender Identities and Female Students' Learning Experiences in Studying English as Second Language at a Pakistani University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rind, Irfan Ahmed

2015-01-01

This paper attempts to examine how female students' roles as learners are influenced by their socially constructed gender identities and gender roles in studying English as Second Language (ESL) at a public sector university of Pakistan. The aim is to understand how female students' gender identities and gender roles affect their learning. With an…

The Effect of Gender on the Construction of Backward Inferences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cakir, Ozler

2008-01-01

The main objective in the present study is to examine the effect of gender on primary school students' construction of elaborative backward inferences during text processing. A total of 333 children, aged 10-11 years (n = 158 girls and 175 boys) participated in the study. Each participant completed a backward inference test. The results indicate…

Missing Stories, Missing Lives: Urban Girls (Re)Constructing Race and Gender in the Literacy Classroom.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DeBlase, Gina L.

This study examined the ways in which eighth grade girls in an urban middle school constructed social identities through their experiences with literary texts. It focused on what sociocultural representations about female identity and gendered expectations emerged in the transactions in the literacy events these girls experienced in English class.…

Gender/ed Discourses and Emotional Sub-Texts: Theorising Emotion in UK Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leathwood, Carole; Hey, Valerie

2009-01-01

This article engages with contemporary debates about the absence/presence of emotion in higher education. UK higher education has traditionally been constructed as an emotion-free zone, reflecting the dominance of Cartesian dualism with its rational/emotional, mind/body, male/female split. This construction has been challenged in recent years by…

Good Guys and "Bad" Girls: Gendered Identity Construction in a Writing Workshop.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich

As part of a larger ethnographic project addressing the construction of gender through literacy, this study focused on understanding how the children in one writing process classroom expressed their social selves in their written compositions, as well as how those compositions were engineered within the social dynamics of the classroom. The study…

Systematically reviewing and synthesizing evidence from conversation analytic and related discursive research to inform healthcare communication practice and policy: an illustrated guide

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Healthcare delivery is largely accomplished in and through conversations between people, and healthcare quality and effectiveness depend enormously upon the communication practices employed within these conversations. An important body of evidence about these practices has been generated by conversation analysis and related discourse analytic approaches, but there has been very little systematic reviewing of this evidence. Methods We developed an approach to reviewing evidence from conversation analytic and related discursive research through the following procedures: • reviewing existing systematic review methods and our own prior experience of applying these • clarifying distinctive features of conversation analytic and related discursive work which must be taken into account when reviewing • holding discussions within a review advisory team that included members with expertise in healthcare research, conversation analytic research, and systematic reviewing • attempting and then refining procedures through conducting an actual review which examined evidence about how people talk about difficult future issues including illness progression and dying Results We produced a step-by-step guide which we describe here in terms of eight stages, and which we illustrate from our ‘Review of Future Talk’. The guide incorporates both established procedures for systematic reviewing, and new techniques designed for working with conversation analytic evidence. Conclusions The guide is designed to inform systematic reviews of conversation analytic and related discursive evidence on specific domains and topics. Whilst we designed it for reviews that aim at informing healthcare practice and policy, it is flexible and could be used for reviews with other aims, for instance those aiming to underpin research programmes and projects. We advocate systematically reviewing conversation analytic and related discursive findings using this approach in order to translate them into a form that is credible and useful to healthcare practitioners, educators and policy-makers. PMID:23721181

Talking (Fe)male: Examining the Gendered Discourses of Preservice Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Engebretson, Kathryn E.

2016-01-01

Through the use of feminist poststructural discourse analysis (Baxter 2003), the author examines the gendered discourses created and reified by a group of preservice secondary social studies teachers (n?=?25). Because gender is socially constructed, it is important for future teachers to examine their own gendered identities in order for them to…

40 CFR 204.3 - Number and gender.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 26 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Number and gender. 204.3 Section 204.3... STANDARDS FOR CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT General Provisions § 204.3 Number and gender. As used in this part, words in the singular shall be deemed to import the plural, and words in the masculine gender shall be...

40 CFR 204.3 - Number and gender.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 25 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Number and gender. 204.3 Section 204.3... STANDARDS FOR CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT General Provisions § 204.3 Number and gender. As used in this part, words in the singular shall be deemed to import the plural, and words in the masculine gender shall be...

40 CFR 204.3 - Number and gender.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 26 2012-07-01 2011-07-01 true Number and gender. 204.3 Section 204.3... STANDARDS FOR CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT General Provisions § 204.3 Number and gender. As used in this part, words in the singular shall be deemed to import the plural, and words in the masculine gender shall be...

40 CFR 204.3 - Number and gender.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 24 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Number and gender. 204.3 Section 204.3... STANDARDS FOR CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT General Provisions § 204.3 Number and gender. As used in this part, words in the singular shall be deemed to import the plural, and words in the masculine gender shall be...

40 CFR 204.3 - Number and gender.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 25 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Number and gender. 204.3 Section 204.3... STANDARDS FOR CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT General Provisions § 204.3 Number and gender. As used in this part, words in the singular shall be deemed to import the plural, and words in the masculine gender shall be...

Persistent Discourses in Physics Education: Gender Neutrality and the Gendering of Competence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gonsalves, Allison

2014-01-01

In her article, Karin Due presents us with a contradiction in physics: the construction of physics as a symbolically masculine discipline alongside a simultaneous discourse of the "gender-neutrality" of the discipline. Due's article makes an important contribution to the study of the gendering of physics practices, particularly in…

Performing Gender in the Workplace: Gender Socialization, Power, and Identity among Women Faculty Members

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lester, Jaime

2008-01-01

Organizational cultures shape and reinforce socially appropriate roles for men and women. Drawing on a performativity framework, which assumes that gender is socially constructed through gendered "performances," this study employs interviews with and observations of six women faculty members to examine how dominant discourses define and maintain…

Shirts and Skins: A Talk on Gender

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baker, Lisa

2013-01-01

The article is a reprint of an address delivered by the author to students at Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts, in Fall 2012. It addresses the author's belief in the important role of schools in promoting gender equality, the gender gap in educational attainment, and the social construction of gender. The author stresses the importance of…

Dumb Dorky Girls and Wimpy Boys: Gendered Themes in Diary Cartoon Novels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taber, Nancy; Woloshyn, Vera

2011-01-01

In this paper, we focus on gendered themes promulgated in three books written in diary cartoon form. Although written for different audiences, each of these books constructs gender norms in similar ways. They promote heteronormative gender roles for boys and girls by endorsing traditional femininities and hegemonic masculinities through the…

Rewriting age to overcome misaligned age and gender norms in later life.

PubMed

Morelock, Jeremiah C; Stokes, Jeffrey E; Moorman, Sara M

2017-01-01

In this paper we suggest that older adults undergo a misalignment between societal age norms and personal lived experience, and attempt reconciliation through discursive strategies: They rewrite how they frame chronological age as well as their subjective relations to it. Using a sample of 4041 midlife and older adults from the 2004-2006 wave of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS II), we explore associations of age and gender with subjective age and at what age respondents felt people enter later life. Our results confirm that as men and women age, they push up the age at which they think people enter later life, and slow down subjective aging (there is a growing gap between subjective and chronological age). Relations between a person's age and at what age they think people enter later life were stronger for men than for women. For every year they get older get older, men push up when they think people enter later life by 0.24years, women by 0.16years. Age norms surrounding the transition to later life may be more prominent for men than for women, and the difference in their tendencies to push up when they mark entry into later life may be a reflection of this greater prominence. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The ideology of convenience. Canned foods in women's magazines (Flanders, 1945-1960).

PubMed

Geyzen, Anneke

2015-11-01

This paper investigates the communication of canned foods in Flanders between 1945 and 1960. It forwards the antinomy between convenience and care as theoretical framework, it uses three women's magazines as source material, and it subjects this material to the technique of close reading. The results show that the discursive construction of canned foods differs according to the ideology of the magazines. Whereas the agrarian periodical discarded canned foods as careless convenience that menaced the idea of the good housewife, the socialist and the commercial publications undeniably accepted them as caring convenience that could facilitate the household chores of working women. The analysis, thus, deals with the ideological aspect of convenience food, an aspect that has only rarely been examined. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

"Healthy" discussions about risk: The Corn Refiners Association's strategic negotiation of authority in the debate over high fructose corn syrup.

PubMed

Heiss, Sarah N

2013-02-01

Many foods and eating practices have been framed as risky by risk societies. Recently, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has become a highly scrutinized food additive. Informed by a social construction of risk framework, I analyze the discursive contributions of the Corn Refiners Association, a trade association, to public negotiations of HFCS risks. I describe how the association's Sweet Surprise campaign advertisements rely on a deficit model to shape understandings of who should participate in conversations about HFCS. I conclude by exploring the practical implications of this analysis, particularly how trade associations can negotiate tensions between promoting health and serving commercial interests, and how these decisions contribute to understandings of the public's role in risk negotiation.

[The foundation of "feminine" and "masculine". Useful theories for the training of future physicians concerning the importance of gender].

PubMed

Risberg, G

2000-11-15

A gender perspective on health and consultation is part of medical education today. Teaching about gender must not focus on differences between men and women as essential, biological, and unchangeable. The meaning of "feminine" and "masculine" is largely a social construction, i.e. the behavior and character of an individual are seldom determined by sex. Furthermore, women and men live under different conditions and have different positions in society. Medical students need to be aware of this and reflect upon the influence it may have on their professional role and practice. To achieve this awareness, knowledge about the construction of gender is needed. This article reviews relevant research in this field. The gender of the physician is used as a basis and illustration of this.

Gender and Heritage Spanish Bilingual Grammars: A Study of Code-Mixed Determiner Phrases and Copula Constructions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Valenzuela, Elena; Faure, Ana; Ramirez-Trujillo, Alma P.; Barski, Ewelina; Pangtay, Yolanda; Diez, Adriana

2012-01-01

The study examined heritage speaker grammars and to what extent they diverge with respect to grammatical gender from adult L2 learners. Results from a preference task involving code-mixed Determiner Phrases (DPs) and code-mixed copula constructions show a difference between these two types of operations. Heritage speakers patterned with the…

Power Plays: Primary School Children's Constructions of Gender, Power, and Adult Work.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Francis, Becky

The constructions of gender formed by elementary school children, aged 7 through 11 years, were studied in relation to their own lives and the issue of adult occupations as revealed in children's role plays. Data were collected from dialogue and role play with 145 children in primary schools in England, and these data were analyzed in a…

Intimate relationships and changing patterns of money management at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

PubMed

Vogler, Carolyn; Brockmann, Michaela; Wiggins, Richard D

2006-09-01

Drawing on British data from two annual sweeps of the ISSP eight years apart in 1994 and 2002, for modules focusing on 'Family and Changing Gender Roles', this paper examines the extent to which changes in women's labour market participation, changing ideologies/discourses of gender and changing forms of intimate relationships are affecting the ways in which couples organize household money, and the implications of such changes for recent theories of intimate relationships. The analysis indicates that by 2002, the type of relationship respondents had established, together with their social class position, were both independently related to the ways in which they managed money, after controlling for socio-economic and cultural or discursive factors. Our findings also provide a degree of support for the thesis of a partial decline in the male breadwinner model of gender, as indicated by small declines in the use of the relatively inegalitarian female whole wage and housekeeping allowance systems which were most likely to be used by married couples and cohabiting fathers, expressing relatively traditional ideologies/discourses of breadwinning - and a slight increase in the use of the partial pool, which was most likely to be used by childless cohabiting couples in which male partners expressed less traditional ideologies of breadwinning and women were in middle-class jobs with incomes high enough to facilitate partially separate finances. We also suggest, however, that in so far as cohabiting couples earning different amounts define equality as contributing equally to household expenditure, it is possible that rather than being associated with shifts to greater equality in access to money for personal spending and saving, the partial pool may be associated with marked inequalities, because it may enable gender inequalities generated in the labour market to be more directly transposed into inequalities within households, despite the decline of traditional discourses of male breadwinning and the increasing importance of egalitarian ideologies of co-provisioning.

"But at school … I became a bit shy": Korean immigrant adolescents' discursive participation in science classrooms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ryu, Minjung

2013-09-01

In reform-based science curricula, students' discursive participation is highly encouraged as a means of science learning as well as a goal of science education. However, Asian immigrant students are perceived to be quiet and passive in classroom discursive situations, and this reticence implies that they may face challenges in discourse-rich science classroom learning environments. Given this potentially conflicting situation, the present study aims to understand how and why Asian immigrant students participate in science classroom discourse. Findings from interviews with seven Korean immigrant adolescents illustrate that they are indeed hesitant to speak up in classrooms. Drawing upon cultural historical perspectives on identity and agency, this study shows how immigrant experiences shaped the participants' othered identity and influenced their science classroom participation, as well as how they negotiated their identities and situations to participate in science classroom and peer communities. I will discuss implications of this study for science education research and science teacher education to support classroom participation of immigrant students.