How EFL Teachers Engage Students: A Multimodal Analysis of Pedagogic Discourse During Classroom Lead-Ins

Classroom lead-in is the initial stage for motivating students to become engaged in-class interaction. However, little research, to our knowledge, has analyzed the role of teachers’ multimodal competence reflected through their multimodal pedagogic discourse in the realization of the ultimate goals of classroom lead-ins. Based on the data collected from a teaching contest in China, this paper explores how two-winner teachers utilize their multimodal ensembles of communicative modes to engage students during classroom lead-ins. The analysis shows that different communicative modes construct the higher-level action of lead-in, and they are orchestrated into multimodal ensembles for the specific function of each lead-in move. The findings indicate that EFL teachers’ high multimodal competence plays a decisive role in performing classroom lead-ins, and different lead-ins strategies influence the different orchestration of communicative modes. In constructing multimodal pedagogic discourse, teachers build up their professional image and display their personal charm as well. Future research for multimodal discourse analysis and pedagogic research is suggested in the paper.

The role of British Schools Overseas in promoting and upholding British values: using transmission context in policy analysis

With their central position in society as facilitators of information, schools and teachers play a key role in the articulation and embedding of government-driven policy targeted at school-age children; under the British government, this key role extends beyond the borders, to British Schools Overseas. In the last decade, this has been especially prevalent in the dissemination of anti-terrorism rhetoric and policy, created to prevent the radicalisation of students; most recently, this has involved the inclusion of ‘fundamental British values’ (FBV) in policy and curriculum. Using the work of Basil Bernstein and, in particular, the model of transmission context which sits within his theories on pedagogic discourse, this paper analyses the discourse embedded in multiple FBV policies. Through a focus on classification and framing of the discourses embedded in the policies, this paper highlights the transmission of power in these policies, with a focus on language used to convey this power; and conveys an understanding of the positioning, role and ‘responsibilisation’ of British schools, located outside of the United Kingdom, as central to FBV education as well as the solution to terrorism in Britain.

EFL Reformed Curriculum in Vietnam: An Understanding of Teachers’ Cognitions and Classroom Practices

Second/foreign language (L2) education reforms have triggered increasing research investigating the effectiveness of and teachers’ cognitions and practices concerning the reformed curricula. This study extends this line of enquiry by employing a sociological perspective, an undertaking that little prior research has demonstrated in L2 teacher cognition literature, to explore teachers’ understanding, knowledge and beliefs about and their actual implementation of a reformed English language curriculum (i.e. task-supported language teaching) in Vietnam. The participants were six experienced English-as-a-foreign-language teachers at a secondary school. The data comprised in-depth semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, lesson plans and classroom observations. The findings showed that the teachers made use of their existing deep-rooted knowledge and beliefs about language teaching and learning to enact the reformed curriculum in their own ways, illustrating a focus-on-forms approach. The study drew on Bernstein's notion of pedagogic discourse to shed light on the teachers’ rationales for their own ways of practice. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

Re-contextualisation and the Transformation of Meanings: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Islamic State Pedagogical Discourse in Iraq

This article is an attempt to investigate the recontextualisation and transformation process involved in the pedagogic discourse of Islamic State classroom textbooks during its takeover of some parts of Iraq. The article uses an eclectic analytical framework comprising Bernstein's pedagogical model of recontextualization, Linell's levels of recontextualization, Fairclough's concept of genre mixing, Wodak's discourse-historical approach (DHA), and Barthes' model of visual semiotics. These mixed approaches are applied to the analysis of a variety of visual images of Islamic State published textbooks and classroom pedagogic visual aids downloaded from different websites. It is found that the meaning of the pedagogic discourse is transformed via interdiscursive recontextualisation processed in two reversal directions: a militarization of pedagogic discourse and a pedagogization of decapitation practice. Recontextualisation is exceptionally significant with regard to Islamic State jihadist pedagogic discourse that is reframed historically and ideologically to suit an extreme sense of religious intolerance which Islamic State prioritizes as a foundation of regaining and refreshing their lost Islamic caliphate.