School Discourse Research Articles

Diverging discourses on multicultural education in Finnish teacher education programme policies: implications for teaching

ABSTRACTThe necessity to include multicultural education policies and practices in schools and teacher education has been widely recognized both in Finland and internationally. However, terms such as ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘multicultural education’ have contested and vague meanings in educational discourse. This paper investigates discourses on multicultural education from critical multicultural education and postcolonial theoretical perspectives. The focus is on the teacher education policies of all the eight primary teacher education programmes in Finland. Discourse theory analysis revealed six diverging discourses within a framework of conservative, liberal and critical multicultural education. The results show that it should not be taken for granted that policies including multicultural education contribute to social justice in education and teacher education. Consequently, policy-makers need to question the rhetoric regarding multiculturalism and to focus on how inequality is reproduced and upheld in discourses in teacher education and schools, and how this can be challenged.

Questioning democratic notions of governance: A case study examining how a kindergarten teacher and her students give voice to and enact a neoliberal framing of schooling

An important factor that may be missing from recent attempts to counter, resist, and/or reconceptualize the neoliberal framing of the early education process is the actions of children, particularly those that reinforce the neoliberal assemblage of schooling they learn through their interactions with their teacher in school. This article begins to address this issue by employing Foucault’s conceptions of governmentality to examine how a teacher and students in a kindergarten classroom located in the USA give voice to and make choices that reflect the dominant neoliberal discourses of schooling. Such an analysis creates the opportunity to consider what needs to be done to assist both early educators and the children themselves so that they can live in the presence of each other within their neoliberal classrooms otherwise.

Young People’s Opinions on Rural Sweden

This study focus on adolescents motivations about remaining in rural areas in the Mid Sweden Region, a part of Sweden with decreasing school performance scores and high out-migration. The study is based on 1,500 young people’s responses to a Web-based survey within the framework of a regional school development project. The research questions focused on: whether youths were going to stay there or move the future in urban or rural areas, influences, and the future choices and differences among genders, regions, and age groups. The empirical data are processed with statistical analysis. The study confirms previous research on young people’s relocations from rural areas; jobs and education are important motives, and the most prone to move are women. What is new knowledge is that lessons about the region’s importance have a positive, significant effect on individuals’ plans to remain in their home municipality. This can and should be highlighted in local, regional, and national politics, but more importantly in school discourses. Since school plays a role in students’ thinking and future choices, a larger formation effort could be of great value for norms and regional political standpoints. The study has relevance to the international terms of similar geographical areas.

Science Teaching: Scientific Literacy in a School Perspective

The article highlights the professional teachers' understanding of what they see as the most important contents in science education. The aim of the study is based on conversations with professional teachers and how they understand what are the most central contents in science education. It is related to scientific language and importance for society. Their understandings are related to the importance of science in the society and to the language's importance to students' learning opportunities. The result of the study's interviews are analyzed on the basis of Basil Bernstein's concept of the horizontal and vertical discourse, which demonstrates the opportunities for pupils to approach a scientific content based on a contextual understanding. How science is taught is an important question in the aspect of students coming from different socioeconomic conditions and with different conceptions of the outside world and the science school discourse. In the present study the professional teachers' in particular stresses the importance of a holistic understanding of the content in science, the methodical aspects in science education and the consequences of science and technology development. To be science literate in a teaching context means that the students will get the capacity to use scientific knowledge, to identify questions and to draw evidence based conclusions in order to understand and help make decisions about the natural world and the changes made to it through human activity.

The ‘fear of falling behind regime’ embraces school policy: state vs federal policy struggles in California and Texas

This article maps the genealogies of how California and Texas have dealt with school policy. The twin purpose is to shed light onto the dynamics governing the formation of K-12 education policy in two influential and different states, and visualizing the intensification of state-federal interaction that has gradually evolved into a national school discourse since the 1960s and with particular speed since the 1990s. The argument is that an overarching ‘fear of falling behind’ regime has been a driving force in establishing a national school discourse by amalgamating standards-based education discourse with previously dominant civil rights discourse. Drawing upon Foucauldian discourse analyses of policy documents, education debate and policy literature, the author demonstrates how documenting different state contexts sheds light upon the forces at work in shaping ambiguous balances between federal and state levels that simultaneously transform both, as is currently manifested in the transition from NCLB(2001) to ESSA(2015).

Teacher discourse constructing different social positions of pupils in Finnish separative and integrative religious education

This article examines social practices within classroom discourse in two different Finnish religious educational contexts. The article critically observes the construction of certain positions and identities as part of the school discourse and the inclusive vs exclusive practices of language. The research material consists of classroom observations and staff interviews from two separate studies. The first study investigates two cases in separative religious education (RE), Islamic and Lutheran. The second study deals with integrative practices of RE. In this study, discourse analysis as a methodological tool is used to examine discursive practices in RE lessons. The study will explore the following question: What kinds of subjectivities are constructed through teachers’ discursive practices in separative and integrative RE? The study will demonstrate that teachers use scientific language to underline the objective nature of RE and use the language of belonging to engage their pupils on a personal level. The former ends up silencing the religious stance, while the latter often excludes those who do not share those specific experiences. The findings reveal some challenges in developing inclusive teaching.

The politics of student voice: unravelling the multiple discourses articulated in schools

For almost two decades student voice has been used and enacted in educational settings for a range of purposes. Student voice theorists have framed it in sociocultural, social constructionist and poststructural terms. It has been located in a range of schooling discourses and there have been powerful critiques of instrumentalist uses of student voice. It has been reified for its potential to leverage schooling reform, associated with accountability, governmentality and technologies of control, and also heralded as a process to activate radical collegiality in educational settings. This article investigates how school leaders from Aotearoa/New Zealand discursively locate the complex and contested construct of student voice in their schooling settings. Drawing data from principal interviews, discourses inherent in school leader comments are analysed to consider the contribution of student voice. A consideration is provided of how young people are ascribed positions as agents in contemporary Aotearoa schools.

Doing gender beside or in music: Significance of context and discourse in close relationship in the Swedish music classroom

This article explores the significance of context and discourse from a gender perspective within three different studies of the Swedish music classroom, conducted in lower secondary school, upper secondary school and higher music education respectively. The theoretical point of departure is that gender performances as well as the music classroom are discursively constructed within a specific context. The result suggests that if discourse and context are directed towards music as identity and skill, gender is performed in music, but if the music classroom is constructed as educational, gender is performed beside music. A conclusion is therefore that the impact of gender in the music classroom has to be understood as a matter of school discourse and school context in close relationship. It is argued that studying the interplay between context and discourse can be a way ahead for understanding the complexity in the relationship between music education and gender.

IDEASIONAL FUNCTION TRANSITIVITY IN THE TEXT OF DAQAAIQUL AKHBAR: SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC STUDY

This paper reports condition of transitivity system of ideational function realized in the text of Daqaaiqul Akhbar, as a useful form of local cultural text that can nurture creativity of Sasak ethnic group. Investigation in this research was carried out with some focuses as fomulated in the research questions, such as 1) “What is the most dominant type of transitivity system realized in the text of Daqaaiqul Akhbar "Khabar Nature News Hereafter?”; 2) “How is the relevance of the findings with discourse learning in high school?” The purpose of this study was to describe the most dominant type of transitivity system Daqaaiqul Akhbar text and to illustrate the relevance of the findings with discourse learning in senior high school. The investigation was conducted with the application of combination research approach of qualitative and quantitative research approach. Qualitative research approach refers to the basic assumptions as the best effort to gain an understanding of the phenomena. Data of the research was collected with utilization of observation, documentation and record method. The result shows that types of transitivity system found in text of Daqaaiqul Akhbar, which consists of 86 clauses including process items 84 (78.83%), participant 149 items (140.21%), and circumstance 87 items (81.79%). Relevance of the findings with discourse learning in senior high school is, 1) text of Daqaaiqul Akhbar can be a reference that explores the values (value) related learning objectives achievement. Discourse can analyzed based on character in Curriculum 2013, 2). Examination of the text of discourse in high school is not monotonous on the view of structural grammar (conventional) which is still at the traditional level.

Constructing Roma students as ethnic ‘others’ through orientalist discourses in Bulgarian schools

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 school context as a universal cognitive category, internalized in social and individual identities that divide the world into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ The paper argues that Bulgarian teachers’ perceptions of attitudes, behavior, and values of Roma communities are, in fact, a projection of the discursive representations with which western European modernity has constructed the Balkan region. This research contributes to further explicating how the ideological paradigm of neoliberalism intersects with the old Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment dichotomy of civilized–barbarians and how it is reconfigured to construct those incapable of fitting within the entrepreneurial spirit of the free market efficiency as unwilling to democratize. The case of Bulgarian, predominantly Roma, schools serves to illustrate how peoples who are Othered in the western European discourse designate their own Other, and thus provides a fruitful approach to understanding how Roma’s social exclusion is constructed and situated.

Analyzing Process of Problem Solving with Group via Statistical Discourse Analysis

The aim of this research is to examine the effects of various variables (cognitive flexibility, school achievement, physics course success, gender, popularity, family income level) and communication that occur between students in the problem solving process of the high school students. The research, which was designed according to the mixed research approach, was carried out with 80 tenth grade students determined by high school education and purposive sampling. It is given in research; the problem form was obtained by cognitive flexibility scale and observations, the discourses obtained from the observations were coded, and the data obtained from the other variables were categorized. Problem solving situation is coded with rubric in accordance with ordinal variable. Data is analyzed by modelling with multi-level sequential logistic regression and sequential logistic regression analysis. Findings showed that obtaining a creative solution to the problem is related to the success of the physics course related to solution of the problem rather than the general academic achievement, it is related to cognitive flexibility level, gender, family income level. The higher the level of cognitive flexibility and the level of family income, the higher likelihood of reaching creative solutions. The probability of women reaching creative solution is lower than men. The number of discourses and rudely disagreeing discourses in schools with low achievement levels are higher than those of successful schools. While presenting suggestions that are modelled as descriptive in reaching creative solutions, discourse of ignorance is meaningful variable; approval, politely disagreeing, rudely disagreeing are not meaningful variables.

Students' emotional literacy in the discourse of the contemporary school in Serbia

The results of the research on the emotional literacy of students are presented in this paper. The primary goal of the research was to examine the general level and characteristics of the emotional literacy profile. The secondary goal was to determine the similarities and differences in levels of emotional literacy between pupils in relation to their gender and age. “Emotional awareness questionnaire” was used on the sample of 335 students of both sexes and two age groups. The research was descriptive, non-experimental and exploratory. The data obtained by the study were analyzed using the statistical package SPSS. The results of statistical descriptions of the empirical profile suggest that the general level of students’ emotional literacy can be classified as average. Analyzes of differences related to gender and age on individual profile components, showed that the gender differences were statistically significant (p<.001) on all components (“emotional numbness,” “empathy” and “interactivity”), while age differences were significant on the components: “differentiation of emotions” and “empathy”. The obtained findings were discussed in the context of the starting reference model of research. Recommended and needed future steps are the pedagogical monitoring of emotional development of young people, systematic influence on the development of their emotional competences and a far more active role of the school in the development of the emotional literacy of both students and teachers.

The Critical Discourse Analysis of Language Teacher’s Instructional Decisions

Teacher’s decision making is an instant indicator of the discourse activities in the context of education. A critical discourse analysis of the language teacher’s classroom decisions is able to give an insight into the essence of discourse of teacher authority, power, and morality sneaking in classroom teaching at the micro and macro levels, and then understand the force that the hidden power of discourse relations acts on the subject and the object of teaching in the field of educational discourse, the way school discourse communicates as well, hoping teachers, students, language, knowledge being in harmony and free in the context of education.

Cambios de enseñanza-aprendizaje tras la implementación del modelo Reading to Learn/Leer para Aprender en las aulas de educación secundaria de un Centro bilingüe

&lt;p&gt;Este artículo presenta la respuesta de un grupo de profesores de un Instituto de Enseñanza Secundaria bilingüe de la Comunidad de Madrid, con gran diversidad en sus aulas, a problemas de comprensión y producción de textos identificados en distintos niveles y asignaturas. En primer lugar, se describe el contexto en el que surge la propuesta de crear un grupo de Grupo de Trabajo para introducir en el centro la metodología de Reading to Learn, animados por la participación en el proyecto Teacher Learning for European Literacy Education (TeL4ELE) de varios profesores del centro. A continuación, se detallan los contenidos del proyecto de formación permanente que promovieron una reflexión acerca de las capacidades discursivas de los alumnos y el diseño de una intervención didáctica basada en los conocimientos de los géneros escolares con los que se trabajaba en el aula. Finalmente, se analizan algunos ejemplos de los logros discursivos de los alumnos. Tras la experiencia, se constata que los docentes ven en el modelo una posibilidad global de acercamiento a los textos en todas las áreas curriculares, sobre todo, teniendo en cuenta la diversidad de alumnado que existe en las aulas, y desde entonces, abordan sus prácticas letradas de manera diferente.&lt;/p&gt;

Is There a Case for Mandatory Reporting of Racism in Schools?

This paper explores how the colonial hegemony of racism in Australia could be disrupted in schools by introducing mandatory reporting of racism by teachers in Australia, and addresses the benefits and risks of mandatory reporting of racism. Using Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as a case study, the ongoing prevalence of racism in schools is established. I then draw on the literature associated with teachers’ mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect to construct racism as a form of emotional abuse of children. The complexity of racism as evidenced from the literature limits the mandatory reporting to interactional racism by teachers as an antiracist practice. The justification for mandatory reporting covers the emotional stress caused by racism to students and can also be extended to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff in schools. The evidence of learning success where antiracism strategies have been introduced in schools, the opportunity to normalise bystander antiracism by teachers, and the alignment of this reporting initiative with the professional standards of teachers together support a case for mandatory reporting of racism in schools. The arguments against mandatory reporting of racism draw on the generative practices of teachers integrating antiracist discourses in schools.

Call for Papers - Interdisciplinary Dialogues in Early Childhood Environmental Education

&lt;table id="announcementDescription" width="100%"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Guest editors: Dr. Fikile Nxumalo (University of Texas at Austin) and Dr. Nikki Rotas (University of Alberta)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A growing body of work has illustrated the importance of situating environmental education in current precarious times that disrupt idealized notions of both childhood and nature/environment. Drawing inspiration from feminist scholarship and from the environmental humanities, several scholars have critically engaged with ways in which the notion of the Anthropocene, as a current epoch marked by devastating human impact on the earth, necessitates a turn away from romantic conceptions of children and nature (Pacini-Ketchabaw &amp;amp; Taylor, 2015; Malone, Truong &amp;amp; Gray, 2017; Ritchie, 2015). This work supports an orientation towards critical and generative pedagogies that are firmly situated within the messy anthropogenic worlds that young children co-inhabit, and that take seriously the inseparability of nature and culture. Importantly, this work has also taken up the Anthropocene as a contested political marker of current times rather than a neutral scientific fact (Lloro-Bidart, 2016; Colebrook, 2016; Saldanha &amp;amp; Stark, 2016; Tuck &amp;amp; McKenzie, 2014). Taking up the political signification of the Anthropocene in early childhood education includes challenging the figure of the developing human child as future steward – a common trope of nature based education that is rooted in instrumental approaches to teaching and learning (Blaise, 2013; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Taylor, in press). In addition, methodological attention to ‘how’ Anthropocene discourses manifest in early childhood settings and across disciplinary frameworks is important. How, for example, do environmental education practices materialize in schools and communities? In what ways do current environmental education practices affirm the capacity of students and/or reiterate deficit racialized discourses in schools? How might creative and critical practices ‘presence’ (Simpson, 2011) Indigenous land and communities in present place and time? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Building from these and other insights on the potential invigorations of bringing interdisciplinary perspectives into conversation with early childhood environmental education, this special issue invites further critical and creative interventions into questions of research and practice in early childhood. In this special issue, we invite papers that reconceptualize environmental education in ways that situate teaching and learning within current environmental precarities, intervene into dominant child-nature discourses, trouble normative methodologies, and unsettle the universalisms and omissions of the Anthropocene. In this regard, submissions are invited that are animated by, but not limited to:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Black studies + environmental education + childhood&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Black/immigrant childhoods in the Anthropocene&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Indigenous land education + environmental early childhood education&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Decolonizing place based early education&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;#WaterIsLife + childhood&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Toxic pollutants + childhood entanglements&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Discard studies + environmental education + childhood&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Critical disability studies + environmental education + childhood&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Queering childhood-nature relationships&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Speculative practices + creative methodologies in environmental education&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Material Technologies + Environmental Education + Childhood&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Arts-based early childhood pedagogies for the Anthropocene&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Climate change + environmental early childhood education&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;STEM + the environmental humanities in early childhood education&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Multispecies relations + childhood in the Anthropocene&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Affect + Environmental Education + Childhood&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Urban education + the Anthropocene&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;New Material feminisms + environmental early childhood education&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;We seek submissions that push current boundaries of environmental education with young children by engaging interdisciplinary perspectives in critical, creative and generative ways while disrupting anthropocentric, deficit images of children and families. We welcome submissions in multiple formats, including qualitative and post-qualitative research articles, conceptual essays, digital media pieces, aesthetic works, reviews, and interviews. We also encourage submissions from educators working in early childhood settings for the &lt;a href="/index.php/jcs/about/editorialPolicies#sectionPolicies"&gt;Ideas from Practice&lt;/a&gt; section of the journal. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Submissions are due August 1, 2017. Please see the &lt;a href="/index.php/jcs/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions" target="_blank"&gt;author guidelines&lt;/a&gt; for submission preparation instructions. Please contact Fikile Nxumalo (fnxumalo@austin.utexas.edu) and Nikki Rotas (rotas@ualberta.ca) with any questions. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;References&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Blaise, M. (2013). Activating micropolitical practices in the early years: (Re)assembling bodies and participant observations. In R. Coleman and J. Ringrose (Eds.) &lt;em&gt;Deleuze and research methodologies,&lt;/em&gt; pp. 184–200. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Colebrook, C. (2016). ‘A grandiose time of co-existence’: Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene. &lt;em&gt;Deleuze Studies, 10&lt;/em&gt;(4), 440-454.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). &lt;em&gt;Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education: Introducing an intra-active pedagogy&lt;/em&gt;. New York, NY: Routledge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lloro-Bidart, T. (2016). A feminist posthumanist political ecology of education for theorizing human-animal relations/relationships. &lt;em&gt;Environmental Education Research, (23)&lt;/em&gt;1, 111-130.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Malone, K., Truong, S., &amp;amp; Gray, T. (2017). &lt;em&gt;Reimagining sustainability in precarious times&lt;/em&gt;. Singapore : Springer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. &amp;amp; Taylor, A. (2015). (Eds.) &lt;em&gt;Unsettling the Colonialist Places and Spaces of Early Childhood Education.&lt;/em&gt; New York: Routledge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ritchie, J. (2015). Social, cultural, and ecological justice in the age the Anthropocene: A New Zealand early childhood care and education perspective&lt;em&gt;. Journal of Pedagogy, (6)&lt;/em&gt;2, 41- 56.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Saldanha, A. &amp;amp; Stark, H. (2016). A new earth: Deleuze and Guattari in the Anthropocene. &lt;em&gt;Deleuze Studies, 10&lt;/em&gt;(4), 427-439.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Simpson, L. (2011). &lt;em&gt;Dancing on our turtle’s back: Stories of Nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence, and a new emergence&lt;/em&gt;. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Taylor, A. (in press) Beyond stewardship: Common world pedagogies for the Anthropocene, &lt;em&gt;Environmental Education Research&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tuck, E. &amp;amp; McKenzie, M. (2014). &lt;em&gt;Place in research: Theory, methodology, and methods.&lt;/em&gt; New York: Routledge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;

Entwicklung und Förderung der Argumentationskompetenz in der Sekundarstufe I: Die Relevanz familiÄrer Ressourcen

Summary In line with recent discussions in educational research and politics, this article deals (A) with argumentative competences as a key to educational participation, especially in secondary school, and (B) with the impact of familial resources on fostering these abilities. After a short description of the interdisciplinary, longitudinal research project Families’ Support in the Acquisition of Discourse and Text Competence in Secondary School (FAcTS/FUnDuS), its design and central constructs, the paper presents different empirical findings (1) on how argumentative competences develop throughout adolescence with regard to school-related, ontogenetic and familial aspects as well as (2) the design and evaluation results of a parenting training (EfA), aiming at the improvement of pupils’ argumentative competences through the change of family interaction.

The Astronautical discourse in an English primary school during the Principia ESA mission: A critical analysis

ESA and the UK Space Agency have gone to considerable efforts to promote the Principia mission of Astronaut Tim Peake to school children in the United Kingdom. This paper describes a “Space Day” at an English primary school where, with the consent of the Head Teacher and Class Teachers, children aged around 10 or 11 years old received a modified presentation of the standard Principia presentation, and responded with drawings and written personal statements addressing the question “I want/do not want to be an Astronaut because …”. Accepting the validity of these ephemeral items as an expression of epistemology, these statements and drawings were subjected to a content analysis. In a further process of Critical Grounded Theory the key groupings were compared with established characteristic domains in space exploration (e.g. explorer or advocate). A construct found to be helpful is Foucault's concept of a “heterotopia”, which is discussed in reference to installations of space technology and especially the orbiting space stations. The conclusion looks forward to further application of heterotopia to the popular perception of space travel.

The multiple modes of ideological becoming: an analysis of kindergarteners’ appropriation of school language and literacy discourses

ABSTRACTThis study explores Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of ideological becoming (IB) in a bilingual (Korean and English) kindergarten classroom. For Bakhtin, IB is the process of appropriating authoritative discourse as one’s own dialogic interactions. In our study, we view the literacy and language discourses of schooling as one type of authoritative discourse that students appropriate as their own in the process of IB. Additionally, Bakhtin’s focus on language is extended in our study to include other modes of communication, such sounds, symbols, gestures, drawings, and artifacts that children use to make meaning with each other. The study found that students’ appropriation of the authoritative discourse of schooling relied on multimodal forms of communication as part and parcel to the process of IB. Thus, this study illuminates how oral languages (in this case, Korean or English or the informal patois combining the two) provide only one mode in the complex process of internalizing authoritative discourse; the multiple modes of IB surpass a language-centric view. Students’ creative adaptations of other’s voices as their own through multimodal channels of communication may not always include oral or written language.

Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity, 135–700 CE. By Eyal Ben-Eliyahu, Yehudah Cohn, and Fergus Millar.

The idea for the Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity arose out of a conversation between its authors at the conference ‘Rabbinic Texts and the History of Late-Roman Palestine’ at the British Academy in 2008, where the need for a comprehensive and brief reference book was felt. This need was met five years later with the publication of the Handbook that is, according to its editors, ideally to be read in combination with the conference volume edited by M. Goodman and P. Alexander, and published under the conference title by Oxford University Press in 2010. The Handbook is mostly arranged as a bibliographical reference work on all the relevant modern editions, translations, commentaries, and secondary literature related to the different text corpora that are included. In addition to this arrangement, the individual sections on the various sources address questions of content, date, and language. The authors are mainly concerned with Hebrew and Aramaic works from the period given in the book title, to which they consign ‘the central place in the formation of Judaism’ (p. 1). Therefore, Greek and Latin Jewish sources from the same period have been left out, except for a Shabbat Amidah in Greek (pp. 138–9). The authors of the Handbook followed the proverb ‘brevity is the soul of wit’, which allowed them to include many texts that cannot be found in other reference works or introductions to Late Antique Jewish literature. Thus, the authors offer their intended audience of students of ancient history, theology, and of course Jewish literary and cultural history a notion of the wide range of literary and documentary evidence from Late Antiquity. The temporal classification as ‘literature of late antiquity’ from 135 to 700 ce, however, seems rather misleading for the layman. None of the texts under discussion dates back to the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 ce. Some of them nevertheless contain traditions from that period, and even earlier ones from the late Second Temple period. Thus, one might question the terminus a quo of 135 ce as both too early and too late. Since the work primarily aims at introducing Jewish literary works from the Eastern Mediterranean and Babylon, while excluding a detailed description of the political history of Palestine, it would have been more convenient to take the redaction of the Mishnah around 200 ce as a starting point—the earliest completed rabbinic work, whose redaction by R. Yehudah HaNasi is not disputed among scholars of Rabbinic Judaism. In addition, some of the texts such as Qohelet Rabbah and Kallah may even be post-talmudic and thus belong to the early Middle Ages. Moreover, the authors themselves justifiably raise awareness of the problems related to some of the rabbinic texts included: they are best characterized as open-ended products of school discourses that are likely to contain not only ancient traditions but also medieval accretions, due to the fact that the oldest attainable manuscripts originate in the Middle Ages (p. xi). For this reason, a more open time-frame from Antiquity to the early Middle Ages might have better matched the character of the texts, while at the same time not questioning the relevance of both the Handbook and the sources for the study of Late Antiquity.