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The purpose of this paper is to explain, in the context of the massification and internationalisation of higher education, how Web 2.0 and its socially oriented knowledge system (episteme) has the potential to counter the current neo‐colonial disprivileging of non‐mainstream knowledge systems and discourses.

The paper, drawing on postcolonial, epistemological, and Web 2.0 learning literatures, first deconstructs the continued dominance of the traditional academic discourse in transcultural settings. It then illustrates how Web 2.0's non‐foundational approach to the nature of knowledge gives it the capacity to construct postcolonial transcultural learning zones that are inherently open to other knowledge systems and discourses.

The paper concludes that the socially oriented knowledge system or episteme of Web 2.0 enables educators to create postcolonial, meaning more epistemically inclusive, transcultural learning zones in which no one knowledge system or discourse is automatically privileged.

The paper highlights the role Web 2.0 can play in negating the colonialising impact of dominant educational practices that disprivilege non mainstream knowledge systems and discourses that have entered university learning environments through massification and internationalisation.

The paper addresses a significant gap in the literature by highlighting the pivotal but much neglected role of epistemology in Web 2.0 as well as in the internationalisation and massification of higher education. More specifically, it indicates how the respectful acceptance of different knowledge systems and discourses can create postcolonial architectures of learning and promote a more egalitarian form of cosmopolitanism.

Describes an action research project in a church affiliated, community‐based social service organisation in Aotearoa, New Zealand, in which feminist and poststructural discourse theory is drawn on to examine collaboratively the discourses available and impinging upon the work of staff developing a residential service for women and children. Managerial, psychology and human rights discourses dominated the possibilities for the work. Some staff chose to resist these by articulating and positioning themselves within social justice, communitarian and liberation theology discourses.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how pregnant women position themselves in the relationship with their immediate leader as a result of their pregnancy. Secondly, this study explores what kind of discourses pregnant followers' produce and use when they represent the reasons why the relationship with their leader developed the way it did during their pregnancy.

In total, 40 interviews were carried out among 20 working women, adopting a discursive approach in data analysis while focusing on their representations about their periods of pregnancy both during and after the experience.

Women positioned themselves as “accepted” or “dismissed” in the relationship with their leader due to their pregnancy. The study identifies three different discourses relating to the positioning, namely “similarity”, “expectations”, and “rooting deeper”.

There is a lack of research exploring the explanations behind the nature of leader‐follower relationships in the context of the followers' pregnancies. Furthermore, the discursive approach adopted in this study is less used within studies concerning relationships between leaders and followers, and studies concerning pregnant working women.

The purpose of this paper is to promote discourse analysis as a valuable theoretical perspective to further examine how communication and other discursive practices may impact strategy‐related outcomes.

The author uses a single case study of a French village in an illustrative way, to show how stakeholders (can) communicate to influence the strategic development of an organization.

A set a propositions is identified as an understanding of why new discourses emerge and institutionalize in a given setting.

As the production of texts was used to observe practitioners’ participation in the strategy process, silent forms of participation may have passed unnoticed.

Practitioners who aim at influencing the strategy process may be interested in identifying the discursive context (producers of consumers of texts) and in improving their conversational skills.

The paper suggests a three‐step process to study the strategy process from a linguistic perspective: identify the producers of texts, examine how the texts are written/told, explain how a set of texts come to dominate a conversation.

The purpose of this paper is to critically investigate year 6 and year 9 boys’ constructions of masculinity in the light of theories of inclusive masculinity and to consider the implications of the findings for critical masculinities scholarship in educational research.

Qualitative data was collected through fieldwork in school settings consisting of observations and semi-structured interviews. Data analysis draws upon pro-feminist and post-structuralist theories of the gendered subject.

The data shows some evidence of inclusive forms of masculinity expressed by the boys’ rejection of a “boy code” (Pollack, 1999) and their narratives of caring and emotional experience. However, discourses of dominant masculinity persist and continue to shape the boys’ subjectivities. The most striking finding is the capacity of the educational gender work programme reported on in this study to provide boys with the resources to problematise the social construction of masculinity.

The data suggests analysis in binary terms of inclusive or dominant masculinity fails to recognise the fuzzy educational middle ground occupied by the “overlooked ordinary boys” (Brown, 1987; Roberts, 2012) of this study.

Educational gender work programmes which provide boys with the resources to question dominant masculine practices enable boys to exceed the “symbolic order” and trouble dominant gender discourse.

In order to develop nuanced theory and practice researchers need to listen to boys’ accounts of their experiences. Analysis of boys gender work in terms of binary adult constructs of masculinity run the risk of perpetuating the essentialism they purport to avoid rather than producing studies which provide an empirically robust foundation for developing an effective practical educational agenda. In a neo-liberal policy context the role of gender equity programmes with the capacity to produce more reflexive masculine subjects requires reassertion within the curriculum.

This study aims to illustrate how one-sixth grade language arts teacher transforms the theory of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) into practice, an effort made visible through classroom discourse.

This classroom discourse inquiry is guided by tools of reconstructive discourse analysis which encourage a complex consideration of communicative efforts with intent to deconstruct them in the process of uncovering how oppressive social power structures are maintained. Additionally, reconstructive discourse analysis drives attention to how the data analyzed can reveal both how discourse marks moments where justice is constructed as well as how unjust structures may be reshaped into those that are more equitable.

In a setting where rapport and trust have been established, intentional teacher-driven classroom discourse influenced the ability of student cultures, namely, their languages, to be sustained in the classroom on their own merits and not merely as a conduit for accessing dominant academic material.

The information presented in this manuscript in the form of analysis of discursive classroom moments provide examples for equity-driven practitioners to engage in similar critically reflective activities with the potential to expose instances of CSPs or to assist in the identification of instances where the taking up of CSPs should sought.

One difficulty in transforming theoretical stances to practical actions stems from oversimplification of CSP and related asset-based pedagogical practices as “just good teaching.” By deconstructing classroom discourse, this study can subsequently reconstruct effective, generative, culturally sustaining approaches to community practice within a classroom learning space.

With specific focus on sustainable development of the built environment in Cape Coast, Ghana, the purpose of this paper is to examine practical and conceptual barriers for local planning authorities advancing international outreach programmes based on a global discourse on heritage and heritage management.

A discourse analysis was conducted on documents and programmes produced by international organisations and local planning authorities since 2000. Further qualitative data collection methods included 25 semi-structured interviews, literature and media review and on-site observations.

The study shows that the dominant global discourse on heritage management being interconnected with tourism development is adopted by local planning authorities. However, the requirements to advance initiated urban redevelopment projects are neither adapted to the economic realities nor institutional capabilities of the local planning system. Instead of adjusting specific Ghanaian notions of heritage or local forms of heritage organisations, negotiating the discourse is potentially a more sustainable approach.

The findings reveal important implications necessary to address from sustainable development perspective. The study can help practitioners to develop strategies based on local African planning contexts rather than western discourses on best practice.

This study discusses the impact of an Authorised Heritage Discourse on local planning of the built environment, and the need to rescale and broaden the scope of such discourses to other levels than the dominating national/global.

This study compares filmic and televisual representations of fictional black presidents to white Americans’ reactions to the advent of the United States’s first African American president. My main goal is to determine if there is convergence between these mediated representations and whites’ real-world representations of Barack Obama. I then weigh the evidence for media pundits’ speculations that Obama owes his election to positive portrayals of these fictional heads of state.

The film and television analyses examine each black president’s social network, personality, character traits, preparation for office, and leadership ability. I then compare the ideological messages conveyed through these portrayals to the messages implicated in white Americans’ discursive and pictorial representations of Barack Obama.

Both filmic and televisual narratives and public discourses and images construct and portray black presidents with stereotypical character traits and abilities. These representations are overwhelmingly negative and provide no support for the argument that there is a cause–effect relationship between filmic and televisual black presidents and Obama’s election victory.

Neither reel nor real-life black presidents can elude the representational quagmire that distorts African Americans’ abilities and diversity. Discourses, iconography, narratives, and other representations that define black presidents through negative tropes imply that blacks are incapable of effective leadership. These hegemonic representations seek to delegitimize black presidents and symbolically return them to subordinate statuses.

This study aims to take a discursive view on positive leadership (PL). A positive approach has gained momentum in recent years as appropriate leadership practices are implemented in organizations. Despite the turn toward discursive approaches in organization studies, there is insufficient evidence supporting PL as a socially constructed experience.

The present study addresses an integrative discourse perspective for capturing the PL concept as a social process within the public health-care context.

Four meanings of PL are highlighted: role-taking, servicing, balancing and deciphering.

The meanings shift the emphasis of certain PL definitions to a contextual interpretation. For scholars, the perspective demonstrates a multidimensional process approach in the desired organizational context as a counterbalance to one unanimously agreed-upon PL definition.

For leaders, an integrative discourse perspective offers tools for comprehending PL as a process: how to identify, negotiate and reconcile various PL meanings.

An integrative discourse perspective provides a novel perspective capturing the PL concept within the public health-care field.