Sociocultural View Research Articles

School bullying from a sociocultural perspective

School bullying is an important concern. Whilst there is growing knowledge about the nature, extent and effects of school bullying, areas of complexity in research findings remain. In this paper we develop our thinking on school bullying using a sociocultural theoretical framework. We review existing literature around three main themes: 1) The conceptualisation and interpretation of bullying; 2) The relational aspects of bullying 3) Bullying as part of someone's life trajectory. For each theme, empirical findings are discussed to highlight key issues, and arguments presented from relevant sociocultural theories to provide insight in each case. During the paper, we show how varying strands of research into bullying can be integrated, and how areas of complexity can be explained. Adopting a sociocultural view of school bullying presents implications for both research and practice. Bullying is contextual, and attention should be given to the situated relationships and multiple settings surrounding the behaviour.

Reflecting on Racial Disparities in Pediatric Care: Can Perianesthesia Care Nurses Make a Difference?

OVER THE PAST few months, we have had to reflect, as a nation, on whether and how much we value treating others with compassion, dignity, and respect. These words are at the core of nursing. From basic education onward, nurses learn and practice a patient-centered, holistic approach that respects the biopsychosocial, cultural, and spiritual needs of everyone in our care. Given that in the contemporary United States nurses provide care to a heterogeneous society, it is likely that our values differ from other groups by virtue of our personal characteristics, professional training, and general sociocultural views and experiences. On the other hand, we may consciously or unconsciously contribute to the health care disparities that have been observed in various populations. Terri Voepel-Lewis, PhD, RN, Section of Pediatrics, Department of Anesthesiology, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI Olubukola O. Nafiu, MD, Section of Pediatrics, Department of Anesthesiology, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI

Investigating the Effects of Reader Response Journals on the Quality of Teacher Trainees’ Responses to Literary Works

The present study investigated the effects of writing reader response journals (RRJ) on the quality of responses to literary works assigned. The study is underpinned by Rosenblatt’s Reader Response Theory, literacy principles, and sociocultural views. The study assumes that readers’ responses to literature involve critical and aesthetic reading-writing (literacy) events that are collaboratively constructed. The study involved an intact group (N=22) comprising EFL teacher trainees of a private education college in Ciamis, Indonesia, taking Literature Criticism subject. This time series pre-experimental study entailed repeated measurements of critical reading and assessments of aesthetic responses before and after the treatment. Before the treatment, New Critics’ conventional text-based teaching strategies were given. Findings of the study suggest that, quantitatively, as ANOVA proved, the use of reader response journal gave effects on the constantly better achievements, and, as the Paired t-Test indicated, the treatment resulted in better quality. Additionally, qualitative evidences revealed from observation, interviews, and document analysis showed better quality of the trainees’ aesthetic experiences reflecting varied reader response strategies. The study recommends further studies develop reader response-based literature teaching model across contexts in reference to gender issues.

Changing times? Gender roles and relationships in maternal, newborn and child health in Malawi

BackgroundFor years, Malawi remained at the bottom of league tables on maternal, neonatal and child health. Although maternal mortality ratios have reduced and significant progress has been made in reducing neonatal morality, many challenges in achieving universal access to maternal, newborn and child health care still exist in Malawi. In Malawi, there is still minimal, though increasing, male involvement in ANC/PMTCT/MNCH services, but little understanding of why this is the case. The aim of this paper is to explore the role and involvement of men in MNCH services, as part of the broader understanding of those community system factors.MethodsThis paper draws on the qualitative data collected in two districts in Malawi to explore the role and involvement of men across the MNCH continuum of care, with a focus on understanding the community systems barriers and enablers to male involvement. A total of 85 IDIs and 20 FGDs were conducted from August 2014 to January 2015. Semi-structure interview guides were used to guide the discussion and a thematic analysis approach was used for data analysis.ResultsPolicy changes and community and health care provider initiatives stimulated men to get involved in the health of their female partners and children. The informal bylaws, the health care provider strategies and NGO initiatives created an enabling environment to support ANC and delivery service utilisation in Malawi. However, traditional gender roles in the home and the male ‘unfriendly’ health facility environments still present challenges to male involvement.ConclusionTraditional notions of men as decision makers and socio-cultural views on maternal health present challenges to male involvement in MNCH programs. Health care provider initiatives need to be sensitive and mindful of gender roles and relations by, for example, creating gender inclusive programs and spaces that aim at reducing perceptions of barriers to male involvement in MNCH services so that programs and spaces that are aimed at involving men are designed to welcome men as full partners in the overall goals for improving maternal, neonatal and child health outcomes.

A cultural assets model for school effectiveness

This paper offers a cultural assets model for supporting school effectiveness that moves beyond the deficit and difference approaches of the twentieth century. The model incorporates the capacity to identify contemporary cultural assets, and support cultural continuity, cultural diversity and cultural resilience during change. Undertaking concept-centric analysis, the reconceptualised understanding of contemporary cultural assets informs the construction of schools as cultural hubs, and reveals seven benefits that enhance asset-based approaches to school effectiveness. The model incorporates multigenerational flows of influence, community cultural activities, a communication conduit, and glocalised interactions. An empirical analysis of evidence advances the model’s sociocultural view of effective schools; provides opportunities to extend research beyond minority studies; and establishes the importance of cultural assets in secure base leadership for developing schools as dynamic organisations.

Mediating primary mathematics: theory, concepts, and a framework for studying practice

In this paper, we present and discuss a framework for considering the quality of primary teachers’ mediating of primary mathematics within instruction. The “mediating primary mathematics” framework is located in a sociocultural view of instruction as mediational, with mathematical goals focused on structure and generality. It focuses on tasks and example spaces, artifacts, inscriptions, and talk as the key mediators of instruction. Across these mediating strands, we note trajectories from error and a lack of coherence, via coherence localized in particular examples or example spaces, towards building a more generalized coherence beyond the specific example space being worked with. Considering primary mathematics teaching in this way foregrounds the nature of the mathematics that is made available to learn, and we explore the affordances of attending to both coherence and structure/generality. Differences in ways of using the framework when either considering the quality of instruction or working to develop the quality of instruction are taken up in our discussion.

Grade 4 Learners’ Linguistic Difficulties in Solving Mathematical Assessments

The underperformance of South African learners in literacy and numeracy is a cause of concern, especially at the transition from Grade 3 to Grade 4. At Grade 4 in South Africa, the majority of learners begin learning in English, which to them is an additional language posing transition challenges of a linguistic nature. The sustained poor performance of learners in the Annual National Assessments (ANAs) in mathematics in both primary and secondary grades since the assessments’ inception in 2011 constitutes the context for this study. This study aims, through a case study approach of three Grade 4 classes of English additional language learners, to explore Grade 4 learners’ linguistic difficulties in solving problems in the 2013 ANA mathematics paper. The study is informed by Vygotsky’s sociocultural view of language being central to learning, which itself is a social process embedded in sociocultural settings. The study analysed 106 Grade 4 learners’ written responses to the mathematics ANA questions and task-based interviews (done after the written response analysis). Findings from both analyses revealed that, for many of the questions, the language used was either unfamiliar or unnecessarily difficult for Grade 4 learners using English as an additional language. Some questions were difficult for learners because they were long and had complex grammatical patterns. The interviews revealed that learners’ poor performance in the assessment was largely due to lack of proficiency in English language, especially reading and comprehending problems in the majority of the questions, exacerbated by the high linguistic complexity. Implications and recommendations from the study include the need for test designers to minimise the language complexity of test items, especially in the early transition grades of learning in English. Further research on the possibilities for allowing teachers to provide linguistic mediation to assessment questions in these transition years of learners learning in English is needed.

What happened to our community of practice? The early development of Adult Basic Education in NSW through the lens of professional practice theory.

The field of adult basic education had its genesis as a named field of education in the English speaking world in the mid-1970s, based firmly on an underpinning philosophy of humanistic education and a socio-cultural view of literacy. Subsequent decades of its development have involved recurrent and destabilising periods of change with a major and overriding theme being the move away from the humanist philosophy, towards an economically driven, human capital view of literacy, which mirrors the story of a number of other social programs in their trajectory towards the ‘new capitalism’. This paper considers the first fifteen years, or genesis, of the field of adult basic education in the state of New South Wales in Australia through official documents and archival material and through the stories from practice told by the teachers. Analysis of these stories using a theory of professional practice knowledge demonstrates the ways in which the early field of professional practice emerged as a product of its particular socio-political climate, and demonstrates also the strong convergence between the public discourses and the professional discourses surrounding the field in this period; a convergence which was progressively weakened in subsequent decades.

Can mobile health training meet the challenge of ‘measuring better’?

ABSTRACTMobile learning has seen a large uptake in use in low- and middle-income countries. This is driven by rhetorics of easy scaling, reaching the hard-to-reach and the potential for generating analytics from the applications used by learners. Healthcare training has seen a proliferation of apps aimed at improving accountability through tracking and measuring workplace learning. A view of the mobile phone as an agent of change is thus linked with a technocentric approach to measurement. Metrics, initially created as proxies for what gets done by health workers, are now shaping the practices they were intended to describe. In this paper, we show how, despite some valiant efforts, ‘measuring better’ remains difficult to achieve due to entrenched views of what measurement consists of. We analyse a mobile health (mHealth) classification framework, drawing out some implications of how it has been used in training health workers. These lead us to recommend moving away from a view of mobile learning linked tightly to accountability and numbers. We suggest a focus on an alternative future, where ‘measuring better’ is promoted as part of socio-cultural views of learning and linked with a social justice conceptualisation of development.

Increasing engagement of students with learning disabilities in mathematical problem‐solving and discussion

Engagement in problem‐solving and mathematical discussion is critical for learning mathematics. This research review describes a gap in the literature surrounding engagement of students with Learning Disabilities in standards‐based mathematical classrooms. Taking a sociocultural view of engagement as participation in mathematical practices, this review found that students with LD were supported towards equal engagement in standards‐based mathematics through multi‐modal curriculum, consistent routines for problem‐solving, and teachers trained in Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching. Using this small set of studies (7), we identify the need to deepen the engagement of students with LD in mathematical problem‐solving and discussion. This review concludes with implications for teaching and learning.

‘Having my own room would be really cool’: Children’s rooms as the social and material organizing of siblings

In this article, the authors examine how materiality can be understood as a co-creator and significant carrier of social processes. They focus on the ways children in large sibling groups relate to bedrooms and identify the logics at play when the organizing of children’s bedrooms and siblings are interwoven. Children have dreams and expectations of establishing a space by way of having their own room and stuff, and they implement this desire for ownership through specific strategies to obtain material presence and leave territorial marks, which afford them positioning and recognition within sibling relations and families. The authors’ analysis clearly shows that children gain material weight across households with varying material resources and different socio-cultural views on how to allocate these resources. It also shows that processes surrounding the material constitution of siblingships are embedded in a child-focused society with strong cultural norms about what constitutes a good life for children.

The Impact of Gender and Spatial Differentials on Schooling Decisions: a Socio-Cultural Perspective of Cameroon

This article discusses how socio-cultural views of families relate to schooling decisions in a developing context. It shows that socio-cultural interactive ways in Cameroon differ not only with respect to rural-urban settings and gender but also influence the ways families and other stakeholders make educational decisions. The article brings to light socio-cultural and interactive differences and influences in families’ schooling decisions with respect to rural-urban as well as gender perspectives. How divergent are these aspects and what factors can be attributed to such differences? The higher values of Gini-coefficients between the urban and rural samples portray the relatively higher level of social inequality that exists in most developing countries. This also shows the effect of collectivist values that still exist in rural communities in developing countries. Through this comparison, the article affirms Hofstede’s cultural dimensions of individualism and collectivism. It further draws attention to the point that even within countries, different forms and values of cultures are practiced. These are important stepping stones that can guide national and global stakeholders in their educational and economic plans.

PRACTITIONER OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING AS PART OF NOVICE TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

This paper identifies challenges that English as a foreign language (EFL) novice teachers in Indonesia may face in developing a professional identity, which, in this paper, refers to becoming a practitioner of cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is a mandated teaching method both in the 2006 and 2013 Indonesian curriculum, and is under the umbrella of Communicative Language Teaching approach that has been adopted by English instruction in Indonesia since 1980s. This approach stresses interaction between language learners and the use of the target language in this interaction. Drawing on four related theories of development of selves (Wenger’s Concepts of Community of Practice, Lave and Wenger’s Concepts of Situat- ed Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Gee’s Sociocultural Views of Identity, and Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain’s Concepts of Identi- ty and Agency in Cultural Worlds), four challenges to the development of the target professional identity are identified: (1) the unavailability of community of cooperative learning practitioners, (2) hegemony vs. identity development, (3) agency in the midst of tensions, and (4) institutional identity vs. professional identity. These interconnected and overlapping challenges suggest novice EFL teachers to possess agency to attain the target identity and suggest teacher education programs to equip their student teachers with knowledge and skills of teacher identity development and agency.

Metadiscourse in Persian and English Research Article Introductions

This study aims to investigate the use of metadiscourse in Persian and English research article introductions in the field of linguistics. The corpus of the research consists of 40 introductions of linguistics research articles, 20 Persian and 20 English. The analytical framework for this study is Hyland's (2004) model of metadiscourse in academic text. In order to investigate the similarities and differences in the implication of metadiscourse (i.e. the interactive and interactional resources) between these texts, both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used. On the qualitative basis, this study identifies and categorizes metadiscourse markers and a comparative analysis is conducted to determine the frequency of different types of metadiscourse. The results are analyzed carefully and quantitatively which include the general distribution of metadiscourse in each category and then the density of metadiscourse in both sets of data. They are scrutinized based on the number of sentences and words in the corpora. The similarities and differences between two sets of data are looked at from a sociocultural view. The results of this study make some perspectives into the teaching and learning of writing for EFL learners.

Plurality or Linearity: What is the Experience of Emerging as a School Leader in the English Context?

This study in an English context focused on the development of teachers identified as 'emergent' school leaders. It explored the aspirations and experiences of such leaders, applying a sociocultural view of identity development. Five participants from across school phases, backgrounds and ages were interviewed and generated participant learning logs over 1- 3 years. This paper focuses on the visual representations of these leaders' identity development, to reveal their multiple identities. Whilst identity development was unique, three of the leaders aspired to become senior leaders and two to become 'valued peers'. This paper poses the question as to whether schools and those supporting school leaders fully appreciate and support such plurality?

Why are we Poor Organ Donors: A Survey Focusing on Attitudes of the Lay Public From Northern India

Knowledge, sociocultural views, and awareness about organ donation in the general population are important for the success of deceased organ donation. There is an urgent need to gather this information in order to find out the reasons for poor organ donation rates in India. A 30-item questionnaire was designed in the English and Hindi language and was administered to the lay people in order to assess their knowledge, views, and attitude regarding brain death and organ donation. Three hundred and fifty-two people (male:female=202:150; mean age=30.6±13.9 years) completed the questionnaire. Only 70% of the people were aware that the organs can be donated after brain death and only 44% thought that they understood the meaning of brain death. Media and Internet were the preferred sources for seeking information on brain death and organ donation. The majority of people (81.2%) were willing to donate organs after brain death but only 1.4% had registered for organ donation. Lack of awareness (80.1%), religious beliefs and superstitions (63.4%), and lack of faith in the healthcare system (40.3%) were believed to be the most important reasons for poor deceased organ donation rates in India. The survey also highlighted the importance of the opinion of family members and the religious leaders in making the decision for organ donation. Educational qualification above matriculation was significantly associated with the knowledge of brain death and the willingness for organ donation. Lack of awareness appears to be the most important factor for low donation rates in India. Educating people by using media and Internet and conducting awareness programs may help in improving the donation rates.

The Disciplinary Issues in Malay Figurative Language and Its Similarities with Majaz Concept of the Arabic Rhetoric

The article discusses main issues in Malay figurative language and its potential in developing into a new discipline. One of the main issues, the concept of Malay rhetoric knowledge or discipline is not systematically and accurately organized for hundred years. There is a major misunderstanding in the knowledge and overlapping concepts in terms of stylistic, semiotic, esthetic, discourse and poetic. The Malay rhetoric knowledge seems small and lifeless in modern Malay linguistics and literature study because it lacks innovation which enables in enriching its concepts and structures within the perspective of Malay world and its sociocultural view. This research attempts to enlighten the figurative language values from rhetorical view and to figure out the similarities between Malay figurative languages with the concept of majaz in Arabic rhetoric. This uniqueness points out the potential of figurative language to be strengthened and combined with other branches of knowledge in Malay rhetoric arts. The success of strengthening the figurative language can act as a starting point to a more holistic innovation of the discipline towards the great unity of Malay rhetoric knowledge, which is influential and stronger in carrying meaning in understanding Malay thinking pattern and their socio cultural in communicating through multiple language genres.

The content and implementation of shared professional knowledge in early childhood education

Drawing on the sociocultural view, shared knowledge is regarded as a basis for interdependent working and multi-professional learning in early childhood education. Shared professional knowledge can be seen as a central element in successful collaboration facilitating individual and collaborative professional learning. This study aims to investigate the content and implementation of shared professional knowledge in an early childhood context. Video-taped data were collected using a stimulated recall method from the two participating teachers. The results show that the content of shared professional knowledge was related to two areas in the teachers’ professional knowledge: professional self and professional tasks. In addition, the shared professional knowledge varied according to the teachers’ work contexts. This study offers new knowledge on early childhood education practices and teacher education, considering multi-professional collaboration, and shared learning.

Protocol for a Systematic Review: Targeted School‐Based Interventions for Improving Reading and Mathematics for Students With or At‐Risk of Academic Difficulties in Grade 7 to 12: A Systematic Review

Protocol for a Systematic Review: Targeted School‐Based Interventions for Improving Reading and Mathematics for Students With or At‐Risk of Academic Difficulties in Grade 7 to 12: A Systematic Review

Making implicit metalevel rules of the discourse on function explicit topics of reflection in the classroom to foster student learning

Despite the existence of extensive literature on functions, fewer studies used sociocultural views to explore the development of student learning about the concept. This study uses a discursive lens to examine whether an instructional approach that specifically attends to particular metalevel rules in the mathematical discourse on functions supports students’ learning of the concept in a postsecondary mathematics classroom. The findings suggest that such instruction has the potential to foster learning as indicated by the changes in the ways students talked about functions, and their awareness and modifications of the assumptions shaping their thinking about functions.