What are the influences that govern how people view their worlds? What are the embedded values and practices that underpin the ways people think and act? Discourses We Live By approaches these questions through narrative research, in a process that uses words, images, activities or artefacts to ask people – either individually or collectively within social groupings – to examine, discuss, portray or otherwise make public their place in the world, their sense of belonging to (and identity within) the physical and cultural space they inhabit. This book is a rich and multifaceted collection of twenty-eight chapters that use varied lenses to examine the discourses that shape people’s lives. The contributors are themselves from many backgrounds – different academic disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, diverse professional practices and a range of countries and cultures. They represent a broad spectrum of age, status and outlook, and variously apply their research methods – but share a common interest in people, their lives, thoughts and actions. Gathering such eclectic experiences as those of student-teachers in Kenya, a released prisoner in Denmark, academics in Colombia, a group of migrants learning English, and gambling addiction support-workers in Italy, alongside more mainstream educational themes, the book presents a fascinating array of insights. Discourses We Live By will be essential reading for adult educators and practitioners, those involved with educational and professional practice, narrative researchers, and many sociologists. It will appeal to all who want to know how narratives shape the way we live and the way we talk about our lives.

This book presents a collection of research papers from both experienced and emerging scholars, some of whom presented their work at the international conference ‘Language Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century: Linguistic, Educational and Intercultural Aspects’ held in June 2018 and organised by the Institute of Foreign Languages of the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University, the FIPLV Nordic-Baltic Region, and the Language Teachers’ Association of Lithuania. The book consists of three parts, the first being devoted to language teaching and teacher education. The second section explores literary and cultural issues, while the third part encompasses linguistic and media discourse studies.

This book offers a linguistic ethnographic account of secondary schooling in Umbria, Italy, examining the complex intersection of language, socioeconomic class, social persona, and school choice to provide a holistic portrait of the situatedness of student “success.” The book explores the everyday sociolinguistic practices at the three types of Italian secondary schools in Umbria—the lyceum, the technical institute, and the vocational school—and the language ideologies and de facto language policies associated with them. An analysis of narrative, interviews, and classroom discourse unpacks the ways in which students are socialized by both peers and teachers into specific academic discourses and specialized forms of knowledge throughout their school careers. In those close analyses of the micro-interactional contexts of three classrooms, drawing on a corpus of naturally occurring classroom discourse, the volume illuminates the ways in which certain forms of talk are exalted while others policed and how students either submit to or resist the social labels ascribed to them. This account contributes new insights into the ways in which educational institutions are constructed and maintained via talk. This book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in educational linguistics, linguistic anthropology, classroom discourse, streamed-tracked education systems, and education policy.

This book critically examines multiple discourses of wellbeing in relation to the composite aims of schooling. Drawing from a Scottish study, the book disentangles the discursive complexity, to better understand what can happen in the name of wellbeing, and in particular, how wellbeing is linked to learning in schools. Arguing that educational discourses have been overshadowed by discourses of other groups, the book examines the political and ideological policy aims that can be supported by different discourses of wellbeing. It also uses interview data to show how teachers and policy actors accepted, or re-shaped and remodelled the policy discourses as they made sense of them in their own work. When addressing schools’ responses to inequalities, discussions are often framed in terms of wellbeing. Yet wellbeing as a concept is poorly defined and differently understood across academic and professional disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, health promotion, and social care. Nonetheless, its universally positive connotations allow policy changes to be ushered in, unchallenged. Powerful actions can be exerted through the use of soft vocabulary as the discourse of wellbeing legitimates schools’ intervention into personal aspects of children’s lives. As educators worldwide struggle over the meaning and purpose of schooling, discourses of wellbeing can be mobilised in support of different agendas. This book demonstrates how this holds both dangers and opportunities for equality in education. Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach is used to offer a way forward in which different understandings of wellbeing can be drawn together to offer a perspective that enhances young people’s freedoms in education and their freedoms gained through education.

Despite over thirty years of activism and legislation to eliminate discrimination, parity has yet to be achieved for women in academe. This book describes policy discourse analysis as a framework for considering how those involved in policy-making efforts may make use of discourses that inadvertently undermine the intended effect of the policies they set forth. Allan illustrates the methods of policy discourse analysis by describing their use in a study of twenty-one women's commission reports. In so doing, she highlights the important work of university women's commissions while uncovering policy silences and making visible the powerful discourses framing gender equity policy initiatives in higher education. Her findings reveals how dominant discourses of femininity, access, professionalism, race, and sexuality contribute to constructing women's status in complex and at times, contradictory ways. This important volume will interest researchers across a number of disciplines including policy studies, educational leadership, higher education and cultural studies of education.

Summary: "Learning Discourses and the Discourses of Learning is an edited collection of papers exploring issues of teaching and learning in academic settings. The key theme of the volume is 'discourses' - especially as these relate to institutional policies, disciplinary practices and students' processes of learning in the academy. Particular attention is paid to the experiences of second-language students studying at Australian universities as well as those learning foreign languages in Australia. Employing a variety of methodologies and theoretical perspectives, the papers in Learning Discourses are unified by a focus on rich and socially situated empirical data. The book addresses issues highly pertinent to the dynamic character of contemporary higher education in Australia, one dominated by trends towards the internationalisation and professionalisation of university programs, and the growing intercultural nature of social and academic interactions. Part one covers issues of discourse and change, exploring processes of discourse acquisition and production in a range of disciplinary contexts, along with the nexus between academic and professional discourses. Part two deals with broader issues of the participation and socialisation of students in second-language-use situations, ranging from macro (social planning and policy) issues to the micro (interpersonal) level. Part three looks at the social mediation of foreign language learning covering a range of tertiary and secondary settings in Australia and has a particular focus on Japanese as a foreign language."--Publisher description.