Concerns have been raised internationally about whether alternative learning programmes are producing low-skilled labourers for rapidly disappearing twenty-first-century jobs. Researchers claim that learners in alternative programmes are more at risk due to the focus on low-level vocational and basic skill attainment, with a lack of formal…

This narrative study investigated identity, agency and emotions, amongst an under-researched academic group -- those without PhDs with primary responsibility for teaching, who are also expected to do research. In this interview-based paper, we examine the experience of such Finnish academics in a research-intensive university. Thematic and then…

This qualitative study seeks to make meaning of the lived experiences of Black women administrators serving in senior housing officer (SHO) roles at predominantly White institutions (PWIs.) This study will highlight the intersection of participants' racial and gender identities to understand how their identities contributed to their experiences as…

This study examined the elements of [critical] multicultural awareness ([C]MA) and [critical] multilingual awareness ([C]MLA) identified in the pedagogical responsiveness of five literacy teacher educators (LTEs), the factors that influenced such awareness, and the ways in which these forms of awareness shaped educators' pedagogical responsiveness…

How might mathematics educators recognize discourses as resonating harmonies in their practices as researchers? In this paper we share individual experiential narratives guided by Ojibway author Richard Wagamese's Medicine Wheel teachings in the four directions of East (humility), South (trust), West (introspection), and North (wisdom). As we…

This inquiry into narrative explores the often-silenced migration narratives of three refugee students from Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq. It is centered around two particular wonderings based in a critical literacy framework. First, what tenets of critical literacy seem most prominent in the narratives of refugee students from the Middle East?…

Located in a larger study that attempted to challenge taken-for-granted or homogenizing assumptions about constructions of adolescent identity and to interrogate radically the process of qualitative research in this field [O'Grady, G. (2012). "Constructing Identities with Young People using Creative Rhizomatic Narrative." PhD Thesis.…

This narrative inquiry of a lesson intended to develop perspective-taking links our understanding of teachers as curriculum makers with a sociomaterial attunement to the ways that materials, forms, and time are also actors in producing curriculum. We offer a close reading of three classroom enactments of the same lesson and discuss ways that these…

The focus of this article is children's self-organisation of peer-groups through play. The play was initiated by encounters with the environment. The use of ethnographic methods in early childhood research has proved helpful to elucidate, interpret, and understand children's experiences and the creation of meaning in their everyday lives. This…

This article explores the lived and sometimes clandestine professional experiences of early childhood teachers who exist within contexts where dominant discourses of professional are competing with teacher's own understandings of their professional identities. Cultural models theory is used to shed light on the secrete and undercover work of…

This paper offers an approach to support the development of reflective teaching practice among university academics that can be used to promote dialogue about quality enhancement and the student experience. Pedagogic frailty has been proposed as a unifying concept that may help to integrate institutional efforts to enhance teaching within…

In this memoir, I accounted several episodes of my childhood of a middle class family in early 1990s in a Chinese urban city. Two major discourses permeated my account: the nationalism and socialism discourse and the upward social mobility discourse. While my family and I cherish the comfort and joy of everyday life enjoyed in the era of…

This is a description of the conceptual foundations used for designing a novel learning environment for mechanics implemented as an "Industrial Educational Laboratory"--called Fisica in Moto (FiM)--at the Ducati Foundation in Bologna. In this paper, we will describe the motivation for and design of the conceptual approach to mechanics…

This article centres on the narrative of Thuli, a 62-year-old black South African domestic worker taking English language literacy classes outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. For Thuli, English literacy is of vital importance because, as she claims, "if you don't have English, you're just as good as a dead person". Drawing primarily…

Affective engagement to school is a precondition for success among at-risk students who are learning in successful alternative high schools, which provide a second chance for schooling. Attachment is a well-known main characteristic of successful alternative schools. Yet while research indicated overwhelmingly positive psychosocial outcomes,…