Among American Indian Pueblo tribes, community-based language revitalisation initiatives have been established in response to a growing language shift towards English. This has been most prominent among school age children, prompting some tribes to extend tribal language programmes into local public schools. For centuries, the transmission of…

In this paper we examine discourse and interaction during Saturday morning religious instruction classes in a Gitano (Spanish Romani) evangelist church. The focus is on adults as literacy mediators for the children in the process of learning ways to use and interpret the Bible. The analysis centres on two aspects: (1) the forms of textuality that…

This communication discusses an aspect of language and culture that informs the identity of a group of Romany students as they learn mathematics. Observations were made by the authors in a multicultural community in Athens. We explore how Romany language roles and features significantly affect the teaching and learning of mathematics. As examples,…

Pre-colonial traditional societies in Sub-Saharan Africa were mostly oral societies whose languages were not written. In the African context, especially, it was clear that the mostly oral traditions of these societies' languages were neither being appreciated nor promoted as media of communication, or means of education by the invading Europeans.…

The aim of this dissertation is to explicate memory's role in catechesis. Catechesis is a term that early Christians chose to describe their "...work of teaching the gospel and...to mean 'instruction given by word of mouth.'" A brief historical overview confirms the continuity between catechesis and memory from apostolic to present…

Recent arguments have suggested that literacy in the Pacific does not give added status to vernaculars and that it should be discouraged, because it is not part of traditional cultures. This article disputes this interpretation, arguing that as these cultures have changed since colonial contact, literacy has been fully incorporated into many local…

This mother-daughter case study focuses on a key feature of discourse within a Mexican immigrant family that links oral traditions to resilience and motivation. I combine observations from a previous ethnographic study with recent follow-up interviews of a Mexican immigrant student building on a funds of knowledge framework and an ecological…

In this article, the author proposes to offer the narrative "The Boy Who Could Not Understand" for review and criticism as a manifestation of Native philosophical organicism. It is his contention that the tale represents a form of Native auto-criticism resulting from experiential encounters with youth who had returned from white boarding schools.…

Presents three teachers' recommendations for works of literature that use a strong oral tradition. Discusses each of the teacher selections: "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J.K. Rowling); "Cuentos: Tales from the Hispanic Southwest" (compiled by Juan B. Rael); and "The Way to Rainy Mountain" (N. Scott Momaday). (SG)

Compares epistemological changes resulting from alphabetization in ancient Greece to similar changes in nursing education. Three dynamics are explored: sedimentation of words, growth of criticism, and the new rationality. Suggests that criticism is a positive change, the devaluing of sensory and experiential knowledge a negative change. Contains…

Discusses the conflict between local knowledges and global knowledges in the specific case of indigenous literacy in northwestern Brazil, where global knowledges are represented by the ideological theories of literacy and utilitarian models of writing, and local knowledges are represented by the multimodal texts produced by the Kashinawa…

Discusses five forms of traditional oral poetry from around the world which not only provide a window into the cultures that nourish them, but inspire students to perform poetry, both their own and that from literature. Offers examples of each form, and presents writing exercises and ideas for students. (SR)

Notes that in Native American storytelling, memory is seen through an already existing story or recognized as a familiar category of experience that is widely shared. Suggests that the implications of the merging of tribal memory and personal memory are profound and that the reach of the storyteller's memory extends beyond his own lifetime, her…

One of the major challenges facing South African higher education institutions is to deal with the learning preferences and styles of an increasing diverse student population. Although much research has been conducted on the identification of learning styles theories for classroom application, little attention has been devoted to the investigation…

Two-thirds of the world's conflicts are in Africa. In particular, the Great Lakes region (Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Tanzania) continues to see conflicts that are complex, extreme and seemingly intractable. By exploring the narrative experiences of those most affected by the conflicts in the region--specifically…