Learning and Teaching

There have been significant increases in the number of universities and student enrollments in the last fifteen years in Ethiopia. The numerical gains have brought about improved access to higher education for students. The expansion has also diversified fields of study and opened opportunities to pursue higher degrees to a significant number of students. Furthermore, the opportunity created for the university staff includes increased university job security, positions in the university leadership and scholarships for PhD degrees. On the other hand, the downside effects of the massification have worsened the conditions of university teaching staff. Among others, it has resulted in increasing work load and extended work schedules for academic staff. A managerialist culture has evolved that measures teaching against instrumental outcomes. There is a sense of deprofessionalisation and deskilling among staff manifested in practices that are disconnections from professional knowledge, skills and attitudes. As staff are increasingly over-engaged, by taking more weekly class hours and managerial responsibilities, less ‘down time’ is available to keeping with developments in their fields of specialisation and practice

In this paper I report the action research I carried out on improving the teaching
and learning of academic writing at a university. The action research sprang out of
my experiences of learning and teaching academic writing. It sought locality and
originality in what students read and write during academic writing courses. The
macro and micro discourse and practice of textual literacy, especially academic
writing literacy, in Third World academia, which the action research tried to
disentangle, has major stifling effects on what and how students learn to write. It
was this learning condition that the action research sought to challenge by adopting
Habermas’ communicative action for a triangular engagement of course participants
that maximized the possibilities of localized and original meaning-making
efforts. This action research has shown how students seize (and resist to a certain
extent) opportunities in a refashioned course to generate knowledge and make
meanings that are meaningful and original to them.
Keywords: localization; originality; academic writing; academic textual literacy;
Third World university; triangular engagement; communicative action; in-service
students; English; duplication; de-localization

As the world is becoming increasingly flat (Ang, Van Dyne,
Koh, Templer, & Chandrasekar, 2007; Darling-Hammond, 2010;
Friedman, 2005), the classroom has become a mirror that often
reflects this phenomenon at a microcosmic level. As such, teacherpreparation
programs are continuing to emphasize the importance
of understanding and valuing student cultures to inform teaching
practice. This study sought to examine how 10 in-service teachers
in the San Diego area understand the role of culture in their daily
work with their culturally and linguistically diverse students using
the cultural intelligence framework (Earley & Ang, 2003). While
the cultural intelligence framework provided some insight into
how teachers understood certain aspects of culture in relation to
their students, it also brought to light the complexity of defining
and assessing cultural competence. In fact, teachers challenged
the elevated emphasis on culture in the literature, and instead,highlighted additional competencies of value to them in this work.

As the world is becoming increasingly flat (Ang et al., 2007; Friedman, 2007; Darling-Hammond, 2010), it has become important for educators to prepare students to understand global perspectives and engage with people from countries and cultures around the world.  Although there is no question as to the importance of global education to meet with the demands of a flat world, what internationalization and globalization means in the classroom is still an area that is met with some level of uncertainty.  However, clarity around language and instructional objectives is essential if we are to ensure that K-12 students learn what we intend.  This study explores some of the ways in which teachers, students, and principals define this complex notion of global education.

Communicating in a second language could be seen as a process requiring the deconstruction and reconstruction of cultural meanings. If this is the case, how do second language (L2) learners express cultural meanings of their first language (L1) expressions that do not have semantically equivalent L2 expressions? Twenty-nine Japanese students learning English as a second language in the US were asked to translate Japanese cultural expressions that do not have equivalent English expressions. This study found that the students either (a) entirely eliminated the expression from the statement, (b) replaced the expression with an English expression commonly used in a similar context, but with a different meaning, or (c) literally translated the expression into an English expression that made little sense. The study suggests the importance of helping L2 learners develop this bicultural capability to convey rich cultural meanings of L1-specific expressions in L2-based communication.

The tapestry of classrooms today is transforming into a mosaic of colors, languages, and backgrounds. As the
population of culturally and linguistically diverse students continues to rise, a deeper understanding of how teachers
construct meaning and understand their internal and relational experiences when working with these students has become an
important area to examine. This study included in-depth interviews with ten public school teachers in the San Diego area,
which assessed the teachers’ meaning-making systems and their cultural competence. The framework of constructive
developmental theory (Kegan, 1982, 1994) was drawn upon to assess how teachers’ make sense of their experiences, and
the framework of cultural intelligence (Earley & Ang, 2003) was used to determine their cultural competence. Although
both frameworks provided some insight into this phenomenon, their limitations far exceeded their utility in terms of
understanding the complex ways in which teachers understand and approach their work with culturally and linguistically
diverse students. Additional frameworks for understanding teacher -student interactions are considered.

This article responds to the theme issue by providing a glimpse of the historical
and contemporary efforts in the area of developing school, family, and community
partnerships, a long-standing area of need and inquiry in the literature. It
reports on the collective learning from these articles where implications of the
findings pointed to the importance of elevating the importance of these partnerships.
Implementation ideas of strong family, school, and community partnerships
are considered along with areas that require continued attention including, but not
limited to providing professional development learning opportunities, inviting
voices from all stakeholders involved, shifting the paradigm of family and
community involvement from a deficit model to a resource-rich model, and
promoting a more free flowing sharing of research-based practices between the
research community and those who are in the frontlines of these partnerships.

This article responds to the theme issue by providing a glimpse of the historical and contemporary efforts in the area of developing school, family, and community partnerships, a long-standing area of need and inquiry in the literature. It reports on the collective learning from these articles where implications of the findings pointed to the importance of elevating the importance of these partnerships. Implementation ideas of strong family, school, and community partnerships are considered along with areas that require continued attention including, but not limited to providing professional development learning opportunities, inviting voices from all stakeholders involved, shifting the paradigm of family and community involvement from a deficit model to a resource-rich model, and promoting a more free flowing sharing of research-based practices between the research community and those who are in the frontlines of these partnerships.

The paradigm of English as an international language has shifted the ways in which we think about the ownership and use of English, particularly because it is estimated that more than 80% of communication in English is between non-native speakers of English.  When so many varieties of Englishes are acknowledged as legitimate varieties, the question of assessing what it means to be proficient in English becomes critical.  Through qualitative analysis, this study documents the ways in which American English teachers approached teaching English online to students in Nairobi, Kenya, and revealed the complexities of teaching and providing feedback in such transnational contexts, where teachers and students spoke different varieties of English.