Reading comprehension in English as a second language in the context of Iranian education system is not unproblematic. Hardly any studies have been attempted to investigate reading strategies and processes employed by novice and skilled readers through an on-line method of reading skills research in this context. The present study was thus undertaken to address the present need by employing think-aloud methodology to compare novice and skilled reading strategies. Therefore, a qualitative approach was taken to elicit as much information as possible for the purpose of identifying and describing competence in reading skills. The main research question addressed in this study deals with comparing strategy use of a group of novice second language EST readers studying academic English in Iran with another group of skilled second language EST readers from the same ethnic population but studying at the highest academic levels outside their mother land, viz. in Scotland. Several hypotheses were formed following a preliminary pilot study which included the following: a) there was a positive relationship between the number of strategies used by readers of each group and their performance on the TOEFL test; b) there are common areas in the readers' use of comprehension strategies which make the individual difference hypothesis in reading comprehension a debatable issue; c) the readers tend to follow an interactive approach to reading comprehension. Using an interactive model of reading seven categories of strategies were identified and classified. Non-significant correlation was obtained between number of strategies and language proficiency scores. Using a human information processing system, each reader's protocol was subjected to a detailed stage by stage analysis which supported the notion of the individual difference in reading comprehension. The readers also applied an interactive reading process to text comprehension.

The purpose of this study was to determine the implication for learning for learners whose home language is different from the medium of instruction at school.The study is focused on a group of Afrikaans learners for whom English is not a foreign language. Rather, English is a language that they are in contact with on a daily level through the media, their peers and in the classroom. The study looked at why these learners find themselves in English classes when the language policy of the country makes provision for their specific home language in the classroom. It also tried to determine whether these learners experience problems in their learning as they shift from Afrikaans as a home language to an English medium of instruction in class.

The objective of this research paper was to examine how, through the prism of student migration patterns, the domination of the English language is extended and entrenched. Using the example of Chinese students in South Africa, the paper explored some of the reasons that underpin South Africa's growing appeal as an international study destination. The research specifically focused on the period between 2002 and 2004 which witnessed Chinese students arriving in unprecedented numbers to pursue higher education in a post-apartheid South Africa.

This study interrogates whose knowledge about the self and the other is represented to Iranian students in the 2004 and in selected pre-2004 editions of elementary and guidance school textbooks by analyzing how issues of identity politics, diversity, “citizenship” and development inform the construction of Iranian national identity since the introduction of various curriculum reforms (i.e.: global education) after the Revolution of 1978-79. I draw upon antiracism and transnationalism as discourses of analysis through which the West-East dichotomy is (re)evaluated and interrogated within the context of Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism and Boroujerdi’s (1996) conceptualization of “Orientalism in reverse”. I utilize deconstruction, discourse and qualitative interpretative content analyses as methods of investigating how “race”, ethnicity, social class and gender are configured in representations of sameness and difference. I “look at style, figures of speech, settings, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances, not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original” (Said, 1978, p. 28). I argue that the ideal citizen and Iranian national identity are constructed by references to conflicting discourses of mustāżafīn (the oppressed), jīhād-i sūzandagī (the Reconstruction Jīhād), ‘ashayir (nomadic tribes), Ummat-i Islamī (Islamic Nation/Community), Īrān-dūstī (loving Iran), the Aryan migration, velayat-e-faqih and colonialism. In their discursive formations, nationalist, anti-imperialist, Islamic, middle-class and Orientalist narratives construct a homogenized Iranian citizenry who has always been active in regional/global relations of power. The ideal citizen is represented through the invocation of two types/sets of “shifting collectivities” that identify it as “white”, male, Shi’a, Aryan-Pars, progressive, independent, pious and a leader in the Islamic world. The first set divides between Shi’a-Persians and non-Shi’a and non-Persians. The second set of binary oppositions represents the ideal citizen in relation and in opposition to the West and the East in their multiple and historical forms. These textbooks are assimilationist texts that act as “border patrolling” and “stignatizing” discourses. They are also forms of “textual genocide” that exclude the voices and histories of national and global minorities and acts of discrimination committed by Iranians against women and minority religious and ethnic groups as official knowledge about friendly/enemy insiders and outsiders.

Doctor of Education / This thesis is situated in the research field of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) in education and within a professional context of multiliteracies for academic purposes. The overall aim of the research is to provide a metafunctional account of multimodal and multisemiotic meaning-making in print and electronic learning materials in first year science at university. The educational motivation for the study is to provide insights for teachers and educational designers to assist them in the development of students’ multiliteracies, particularly in the context of online learning environments. The corpus comprises online and CD-ROM learning resources in biology, physics and chemistry and textbooks in physics and biology, which are typical of those used in undergraduate science courses in Australia. Two underlying themes of the research are to compare the different affordances of textbook and screen formats and the disciplinary variation found in these formats. The two stage research design consisted of a multimodal content analysis, followed by a SF-based multimodal discourse analysis of a selection of the texts. In the page and screen formats of these pedagogical texts, the analyses show that through the mechanisms of intersemiosis, ideationally, language and image are reconstrued as disciplinary knowledge. This knowledge is characterised by a high level of technicality in image and verbiage, by taxonomic relations across semiotic resources and by interdependence among elements in the image, caption, label and main text. Interpersonally, pedagogical roles of reader/learner/viewer/ and writer/teacher/designer are enacted differently to some extent across formats through the different types of activities on the page and screen but the source of authority and truth remains with the teacher/designer, regardless of format. Roles are thus minimally negotiable, despite the claims of interactivity in the screen texts. Textually, the organisation of meaning across text and image in both formats is reflected in the layout, which is determined by the underlying design grid and in the use of graphic design resources of colour, font, salience and juxtaposition. Finally, through the resources of grammatical metaphor and the reconstrual of images as abstract, both forms of semiosis work together to shift meanings from congruence to abstraction, into the specialised realm of science.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, 2007. / Title from title screen (viewed 1st April, 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, School of Education, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Supervisors: Sherry L. Field and Mary S. Black. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of History, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 56-57).

Dada a persistente restrição da presença feminina em diferentes espaços-tempos das sociedades contemporâneas, desenvolvemos esta pesquisa com o objetivo de discutir os significados atribuídos ao feminino em materiais didáticos da atualidade. Partindo da hipótese de que a educação escolar, embora não determine, participa dos processos sociais que resultam em tal quadro de subalternização da mulher, focalizamos as apostilas utilizadas pelos anos finais do ensino fundamental das escolas públicas da rede da Secretaria Municipal de Educação da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, durante o ano de 2013. Foram selecionadas as apostilas das disciplinas Ciência, História e Matemática. Desenvolvemos também estudo sobre a apropriação da noção de gênero na produção acadêmica recente da pesquisa em Educação, de modo a mapear e discutir sobre esta outra importante instância de atribuição de sentido ao ser mulher. Em diálogo com o filósofo Jacques Derrida e suas teorizações sobre os processos sociais de construção de sentidos, nossas análises se basearam no entendimento de que as palavras possuem significados instáveis, provisórios e precários, instituídos de modo relacional e diferencial. Com as teorizações de Joan Scott e Judith Butler, trazemos as proposições de Derrida para pensar os mecanismos de produção do feminino no social, através do conceito de gênero e da noção de identidade performativa. Entre os resultados construídos, está a invisibilidade que a história das mulheres apresenta no material de História, a naturalização de funções apresentadas como femininas nas apostilas de Ciência e a reprodução de concepções tradicionais sobre o lugar de meninas e meninos no corpus de Matemática. Mas concluímos também que os materiais didáticos pesquisados já possuem concepções menos sexistas na forma de significar o feminino, observando-se deslocamentos que sugerem certa hibridação. Porém, esses deslocamentos são inseridos nos textos de forma tímida, fazendo com que os postulados com maior poder de iteração sejam aqueles que ainda reproduzem velhas formas de ser mulher e de ser homem, podendo reforçar os estereótipos de gênero, caso não haja acesso a informações que se contraponham às encontradas. / Given the persistent restriction of female presence in different space-times of contemporary societies, we developed this research with the aim of discussing the meanings attributed to the female in textbooks today. Assuming the hypothesis that school education, though not determine, takes part in the social process that result in the subordination of women, we focused in the handouts used by the final years of primary education in public schools of the City Department of Education of the city of Rio de Janeiro network, during the year of 2013. The handouts of Science, History and Mathematics were selected. We also developed study on the appropriation of the concept of gender in recent academic literature in Educational research, in order to map and discuss this another important instance of assigning meaning to a woman. In dialogue with philosopher Jacques Derrida and his theorizing about the social processes of meaning construction, our analysis were based on the understanding that words have unstable, provisional and precarious meanings, established in a relational and differential mode. With the theories of Joan Scott and Judith Butler, we bring Derridas propositions to think about the mechanisms of female production in the social, through the concept of gender and the notion of performative identity. Among the results produced is the invisibility that womens history presents in the History material, the naturalization of functions presented as female in Science handouts and the reproduction of traditional conceptions about the place of boys and girls in the corpus of Mathematics. But we also found that the textbooks surveyed already have less sexist conceptions in the way to mean feminine, observing shifts that suggest some hybridization. However, these shifts are inserted into the textbooks timidly, causing the postulates with greater iteration power to be those who still reproduce old ways of being woman and man, which may reinforce gender stereotypes, if there is no access to information that counter those found.