This research investigates English acknowledgements in dissertations written by Thai PhD students, particularly the generic structure and linguistic patterns of gratitude expressions used in the acknowledgements. Following the line of the move analysis in acknowledgements of Hyland (2004), this article analyzed 70 acknowledgements accompanying PhD…

Using an experimental design, native majority group children (8-13 years, N = 842) evaluated acculturation strategies (assimilation, integration, and separation) adopted by immigrant and emigrant peers. There were medium to large effects of the perceived acculturation strategies on children's peer evaluations. Overall, assimilation was valued…

This article presents a case study of a service-learning programme designed to develop a critical professional identity among teacher candidates. The programme was held in a teacher education college in Israel over a four-year period, 2005-2008. The development of a critical professional identity is examined in relation to the post-structural…

The present study sought to gauge the impact of integrating pupils with disabilities in ordinary schools on the social representations of disability and otherness held by their classmates. In particular, we studied the effects of the disability's visibility--a visible disability (i.e., cerebral palsy) versus a non-visible disability (i.e., severe…

This paper synthesizes cross-sectional studies of the effect of proficiency on second language (L2) pragmatics to answer the synthesis question: Does proficiency affect adult learners' pragmatic competence? Findings have revealed an overall positive proficiency effect on pragmatic competence, and in most cases higher proficiency learners have…

Collaborations between mathematicians and mathematics teacher educators are increasingly being expected, and realized, within the context of mathematics teacher education. Most research related to collaborative efforts between members of the mathematics and mathematics education communities has focused on the products, rather than the process of…

This research comprises two studies examining the antecedents and outcomes of psychological reactance in teacher requests in the instructional context. In Study 1 we investigated the mediating role of reactance in the relationship of perceived teacher request politeness and teacher-student relationship distance with student resistance intention.…

In this article the author attempts to identify the processes associated with the development of identity as a scholar-practitioner and provide insight into how positionality in effecting change in our world is perceived. The author begins by presenting an overview of scholar practitioner ideology, as well as an examination of the deconstruction…

This paper examines the ways in which healthcare professionals interact with patients' family members, and/or colleagues. The data are from healthcare discourses at difficult times found in the manga series entitled Nurse AOI. As the first step, we selected several communication scenes for analysis in terms of politeness strategies. From these…

This paper uses a framework analysis to explore the opinions a cohort of Australian academic staff hold towards professional staff. Five indicative themes were identified from the extant literature on university professional staff: the professional other; managerialism; an expensive bureaucracy; complementary agendas; and the third space and…

In this paper, I describe an innovative assignment for teaching undergraduate students cross-cultural understanding. The Outsider/Insider assignment simultaneously teaches facts about cultural difference and skills for managing cross-cultural encounters. Briefly, the assignment is to write two short papers, one in which the student describes a…

This article examined how the group membership of the person being judged influenced the level of moral reasoning. Nearly 200 ordinary Italians were given two measures of moral ingroup inclusiveness (the Bogardus social distance scale and a self-categorization measure) and the short form of Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT). The protagonists in…

The purpose of this article was to identify how differing cultural factors affect informal learning in the workplace. We have introduced concepts and reviewed studies on informal learning and national culture based on an extensive literature review on the factors influencing informal learning, particularly based on five Hofstede's dimensions of…

In the early 2000s, China's Ministry of Education embarked on a program of school mapping restructure (SMR) that involved closing small rural schools and opening up larger centralized schools in towns and county seats.The stated aim of the policy was to improve educational resources and raise the human capital of rural students. Any progress that…

This is an article about secondary schools in England, and what type of school is fair and efficient for a national education system. It discusses what "fair" could mean in this context, summarises some key policy revisions since 1944 in this light, and reminds readers of the damage caused by unfairness within education. Most notably it…