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This article proposes that both the new critique of organisation theory in education and the “new” sociology of education overlook, in their respective knowledge claims, a fundamental disposition in the human species to view the phenomenal and the metaphysical worlds in a hierarchically structured way. We perceive organisational and epistemological structures much more consistently than some theorists would allow. This consistency is due to the effects of two types of semantic primitives which operate to constrain our world views and whose influence we bypass only with difficulty and only by dint of rigorous intellectual effort. After reviewing some of the various epistemological claims that are made both about educational organisations and about the knowledge that concerns educational organisations, the article discusses the two types of semantic primitives that seem to impinge upon our world views: universal semantic primitives; and acquired semantic primitives. Implications for human perspectives on the world and for theory in educational administration are drawn from the discussion. Methods for escaping the constraints of these two types of primitives are proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current and past work using discourse analysis in the field of educational administration and of discourse analysis as a methodology.

Authors reviewed research in educational leadership that uses discourse analysis as a methodology.

While discourse analysis has been used in the field, little work has been done that explores “leadership” as a discourse practice.

Increased use of discourse analysis in the field might unearth the ways principals and superintendents are creators of discourse and mediators of the discourses of others.

Outlines the aims, purposes and contents of the various reference guides to the manuscripts, poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott, to the dramatizations of the novels, to contemporary and subsequent reviews and critiques of his literary work, and to bibliographical studies.

Agricultural production in Honduras was devastated by the impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota in November 2020, placing people depending on agriculture in a vulnerable and food insecure situation. In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn in the country, these extreme events are forcing more people to leave and head to North America in migrant caravans. Over the last decades, Honduras has been impacted by severe climate change events, including droughts and extreme tropical storms. According to the Global Climate Risk Index (CRI), developed by Germanwatch (Eckstein et al., 2019), Honduras was the second most affected country by climate change over a period of 20 years, from 1998 to 2017. Extreme rainfall and tropical storms, droughts, variation in rainfall patterns, and soil loss make agriculture more difficult, thus placing low-income rural families at the edge of hunger and food insecurity. In terms of migration policy, much focus has been given to economic instability, weak governance, violence and crime as push factors for migration, but the effect of food insecurity and climate change impact is often overlooked in this narrative. Agricultural areas in Honduras, traditionally the backbone of food production, have been identified as climate out-migration hotspots. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the most relevant data to understand the interactions between climate change, food insecurity and the current migration crisis in Honduras.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the explicit teaching of information text schema with vocabulary instruction to primary-aged students in Hong Kong international education.

Data were collected through three quasi-experimental studies with different age groups and participants. Each study divided participants into two randomly assigned groups, either informational texts (IT) or vocabulary building (VB). Impact was evaluated with gain scores on a standardized reading comprehension test and researcher-designed cloze tests of fiction and nonfiction passages.

The explicit teaching of IT can benefit student reading comprehension from an early age, particularly to first language (L1) English students and possibly second language (L2) English learners. School reading programmes should include opportunities for students to experience IT (nonfiction) and fiction materials, and build their vocabulary through incidental learning and explicit teaching. For IT, they should be exposed to: layout – e.g., headings, sub-headings, glossary, and index; and content – photographs and specific/technical vocabulary. For fiction-based texts and VB, the following themes should be covered by younger aged students: antonyms, synonyms, and affixes.

Several limitations apply to this study which will need to be addressed in future studies. These include: the random sampling of students from the overall student population was not an option, given the necessity of voluntary participation and avoiding disruption to school routines. This study used meta-analysis to aggregate results across multiple comparisons largely because of the extremely small samples available. The data show large standard errors as a consequence of small numbers of participants. Hence, the current results, notwithstanding the power of meta-analysis, need to be validated with much larger samples in future studies.

This paper suggests that greater comprehension and cloze performance among L1 students was found due to the teaching of IT compared to vocabulary training, with the reverse result for L2 English learners.

This chapter briefly explores selected English and general education policy documents, curricula, and textbooks within the context of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective and examines how they have changed pre- and post-21st century. First, a policy document related to education in KSA in general (pre-21st century) is analyzed along with an English language teaching (ELT) policy document of the same period. Next, two general policy documents post-21st century are explored, followed by one related to ELT policy. Finally, one post-21st century document related to higher education is discussed. The “network of practices” within which these documents are situated are first detailed, as well as the structural order of the discourse, and some linguistic analysis of the choice of vocabulary and grammatical structures (Meyer, 2001). Issues which might be problematic to the learning and teaching identities of the students and teachers interpreting these documents are also highlighted. Finally, we consider whether the network of practices at this institution and KSA in general “needs” the problems identified in the analysis and critically reflect on the analysis.

ALL THE WHILE that the Carnegie Free Public Library brought culture and information and just plain entertainment to the residents of my home town, The Other Library there also provided the inhabitants with information and entertainment. This latter institution was far more powerful, all‐knowing, and, if the truth be told, more popular with its patrons, for all its sometimes shoddiness, than ‘Mister Carnegie's Lib'ary’. It never shut down, not even on holidays or Sundays, and its operations were as busy before 9 a.m. and after 9 p.m. as the Public Library was during that twelve‐hour stretch of community service. It had no librarian to keep it in order and cost no money at all to maintain, nor did folk have to mind their p's and q's to reap its benefits. The Other Library was Smalltown Gossip.