Maria Mendel
Abstract:
Educational reform in Poland, which formally started on September 1,
1999, foreshadows great changes in the relations between school and
home. These include profound re-definitions of schooling, and also
of teachers’ and parents’ roles in this process. Schools in
Poland used to be the agents of political control over society. For
nearly half a century they operated against, rather than according
to, the will of parents. This traditional role of the school has
fostered the belief among many parents and teachers that schooling
is the teachers’ sole concern and responsibility. Now, however,
since the advent of educational reforms enacted in Poland in 1989,
educational reformers advocate developing real partnerships and
assuming mutual responsibility for education among the school
community of students, teachers, and parents. In view of these two
opposing trends currently visible in Poland, a question arises
concerning the position of parents in schools: Are they able to
influence all spheres of school life according to their rights? The
importance of parents’ roles in school communities is supported in
social contexts in which meaningful forms of words, acts, and
objects create a flexible system where a variety of agencies and
individuals are involved. In this article I assume that
understanding the meanings and mutuality of influence of parents’
roles in the schools may open new educational perspectives, a
situation which is no doubt challenging for educators.[ back
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Jennifer Rowsell
Abstract: This article fits in
well with the overall theme of "semiotic consciousness in
education" because my study of the educational publishing
industry argues for a greater consciousness, or meta-awareness, of
the ideological influence of text producers and their publishing
contexts on textbook content and design. To be sure, textbooks are
still a predominant technology for learning in primary schools,
especially in such central disciplines as literacy and numeracy.
This article argues for a more nuanced reading of traditional
pedagogic technologies like textbooks that includes an account of
producers in their immediate contexts of interaction. What is
more, I diminish the distance between my object of study and the
researcher by infusing my personal publishing history; that is, I
come to this study as a former employee of an educational
publishing company in Canada. This perspective undeniably
influences my gaze and, in the end, enriches my analysis of texts
and their production. In this piece of writing, I argue that we
need to look at the social practices of publishing processes to
fully understand texts.
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Caroline Gwyn-Paquette
Abstract: Using a qualitative approach, the awareness and
discussion of semiotic consciousness, or consciousness of
semiotics, is explored in the interplay between groups of
preservice teachers, their students and their supervisor, during
their practicum. Signs are overwhelmingly present in communication
between the preservice teacher and the students. They influence
students’ reaction to their student teacher and conversely can
help the student teacher understand her or his students. However
it is not certain that the student teacher is conscious of the
signs she or he emits nor that she or he can read the student’s
signs. Observation notes taken during classroom interventions,
transcripts of post-observation conversations and journal entries
of several groups of preservice teachers were analyzed inductively
to seek evidence of awareness of and reference to signs, to
incidents or situations which would indicate that semiotic
consciousness was operating.[ back
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Nancy Stockall
Abstract: The text or con/text of distance education is
typically, at least in the initial stages of teaching, the
responsibility of the instructor. Once initiated, however,
students and other scholars contribute to the evolving semiosis of
the text. Thus, the types of signs that are engendered within the
teaching process are often influenced by the specific technology
used to construct the interaction. This paper addresses the
difficulties of bridging perceived learning differences between
two groups of students participating in a distance education
course using compressed video. Pragmatic aspects of communication
are identified as they contributed to students’ perceptions of
cultural differences and how the technology distorted and
exacerbated these differences.[ back
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Linda J. Rogers
Abstract: This paper explores
the considerations of conscious life for three young children. The
experience of consciousness can be problematic and for the three
children discussed in this paper, the reality that characterized
their home setting prevented or created difficulties for them in
forming other narratives of conscious life, such as their lives as
friends, students, skilled selves, or as coping with surprise and
change.
Consciousness needed to be seen as
having layered textual and intertextual narratives, conscious
represented dynamic changes in perception of self and others. For
two of these children, their consciousness of reality acted as an
overdetermined ability force that kept them in a self that they
knew but did not know how to transcend.
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François Tochon
Abstract: This article is an account of a study comparing
the discourse of sales personnel, student teachers, and expert
teachers during pedagogical interactions. Specifically,
salespersons, student teachers, and expert teachers were asked to
teach a student how to use a telephone answering machine, and were
recorded and videotaped during this instructional task. The analysis
of concurrent verbal protocols indicates a clear difference in the
way pedagogical discourse was organized among salespersons, student
teachers, and expert teachers.
The coding grid sheds light on four
types of discourse embedded in the pedagogical frame as they
appear in the verbal protocols: expositive discourse (declarative
information related to the task), narrative discourse (fictional
example destined to help understanding the task), persuasive
discourse (designed to influence the pupil), and instructional
discourse (direct instruction about an immediate action on the
recorder). The balance of these types of discourse appears
significantly different in all groups of participants. Moreover,
the subtypical patterns of instruction are organized differently
among postulant and expert teachers. The results indicate clear
patterns of expert pedagogy as related to the way discourse is
used in a natural setting. It illustrates the differences in
semiotic consciousness across nonprofessionals, novices, and
experts.
The discussion is based on the
possibilities of semiotic analysis of verbal protocols for
enhancing our knowledge of teaching characteristics and
demonstrating the impact of interactional, semiotic consciousness
on the way discourse is handled during pedagogical interactions.
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