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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to assess the avenues through which traditional notions of information literacy skills shape oral communication curriculum and to identify steps that can be taken to transform the experience of students in the public speaking classroom so that they are offered an opportunity to develop understandings of how they use information to learn.

Approach – This chapter engages in an analysis of teaching materials and best practice scholarship used in the traditional college public speaking classroom. An informed learning perspective is applied to this corpus to identify the ways in which an information literacy skills approach is reflected in current practice.

Findings – The analysis highlights the prevalence of an information literacy skills approach throughout the oral communication curriculum. Textbooks, assignment types and guidelines, along with grading rubrics and instructor feedback all perpetuate a skills approach. Outside class support, including peer tutors and library instruction, also contribute to a focus on information literacy over informed learning.

Implications – Informed learners are better prepared to engage and apply information across contexts and to use information to continue learning. Informed learners are reflective on the knowledge they gain through information use. Therefore, this chapter concludes that public speaking courses, along with the communication centers and libraries that support oral communication instruction, should embrace an informed learning approach to the development of course materials, assignments, and teaching.

Originality/value – Suggestions for reframing public speaking curriculum and support from the informed learning perspective are provided.

The main objective of this article is to contribute to the field of accessibility in the teaching of sign language in the international panorama, examining its applicability, evaluation methods as well as the assistive technologies used to improve teaching experiences and the creation of new materials, proposing a theoretical framework that relates the teaching of sign language at different academic levels, the training of teachers, as well as parents, and the use of technology to achieve educational inclusion. It follows that the adoption of hybrid technology approaches, following universal design principles, can help to integrate access to education and sign language literacy.

The working method used to carry out this work consists of a systematic review of the scientific literature. This is a research project based on the recapitulation of information about sign language in the international panorama and the improvements used for its instruction. For this purpose, the well-known PRISMA (Moher et al., 2009) is used to synthesize the search carried out. A systematic review of the articles published in scientific journals about pedagogy in the teaching of sign language in the international field and technological innovation for sign language teaching has been carried out, incorporating different approaches and personal assessments. The first phase of the method consists of identifying and analyzing the articles published in scientific journals on the teaching of sign language on the international scene and the importance of new educational models with the incorporation of various didactic adaptations, evaluating the selected articles over a period of time from 2009 to 2021. Six steps were used in the systematic review study (Figure 1). First, Steps 1–4 were conducted in 2020 and 2021 as part of a doctoral research. A schematic summary of Steps 1–4 is presented below, followed by Steps 5 and 6, added later to the study after completion of Step 4. In the case of the first four steps they were conducted by two researchers: the thesis tutor and the doctoral student, and Steps 5 and 6 were conducted by the Ph.

To carry out the analysis of the results, the codification of the variables was carried out. The selected studies are characterized by their international context with a final selection of 39 studies have found several variables that affect the relationship between the teaching of sign language in the international arena and the use of technological innovations to adapt their teaching to students (Figure 4). In this section we present the technology grouped variables included in each factor and the possibilities of standardization and applicability of sign language teaching in the international panorama. Within these articles, the importance of defining training programs in sign language for teachers and the need to evaluate teaching programs is identified, with a focus on actions to improve school curricula to achieve linguistic standardization and inclusion in the academic environment, as well as their use at all levels of education. Therefore, professional practices and cooperation between institutions such as: associations of families of deaf students and educational institutions must be improved, making it possible to give a quality education. Within the exclusion criteria, the articles that do not use sign language teaching tools (n = 45) were subsequently discarded, followed by the articles that do not indicate any intervention in students with disabilities (n = 48), concluding with the articles that nonsign language disability education (n = 44). Subsequently, among those selected, the technology articles that do not speak about sign language were discarded (n = 32), as well as the studies that protect indigenous language but not sign language (n = 33) and, to conclude, the linguistic normalization articles but do not cite sign language (n = 37).

Communication is the element by which the authors can understand each other with the rest of the people around us, in the diversity of language, within non-verbal language, the authors find sign language, the language of deaf and mute people, of families, as a professional employee and nowadays, learned by many non-deaf and mute people to achieve a more inclusive and integrated society with all people. Every country has the right to have its own sign language, especially one that claims its culture and customs, through non-verbal communication with which to express multiple meanings, emotions and intentions. It is essential to know and apply the technological advances that are being developed, promoting the right to autonomy and the defense of the indigenous language as a cultural element of the intangible heritage of each country. The use of technology allows the democratization of culture and access to information regardless of where one lives in the world, in an increasingly globalized society in which communication plays a fundamental role. In the case of the global pandemic, it has forced us to the advancement of home education and the use of efficient digital tools to achieve it such as videoconferencing, in the field of disability there are still many limitations on this use by the various companies that develop them. Within the inclusive educational research the authors must emphasize the need for equality of tools and content for all types of students, especially in sign language. Large digital gaps have been generated in families with and without resources at international level, which also have a member with a disability, this is pointed out in the research mentioning the current situation of the American continent, as well as the search for improvement of the tools and platforms in which they are developed.

Illustrated through ethnographic data drawn from a case study of a full-day kindergarten in Ontario, Canada, this chapter argues for an approach to inclusive curriculum that places the ethical relation at the center and promotes children’s rights through opportunities for multimodal communication. Theoretically, this case drew on multimodal literacy and ethical curricula. The study used ethnographic tools such as class observations, semi-structured interviews, and collection of children’s work. Findings indicate that responsive, ethical curricula through multimodal pedagogies were intrinsically inclusive of all children’s funds of knowledge and encouraged children to become curricular informants and take control of their choices of meaning making.

Research has shown that the discursive patterns students use in their email interactions with their teachers are not linguistically and socio-culturally appropriate. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to try to explore how socio-cultural conventions influence the Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ choices of discourse strategies in their email communications within an academic context. The study, then, investigates the impact of social distance and gender on the stylistic features of students’ email texts.

The email texts written by 180 university students majoring in Applied Linguistics were systematically analyzed based on such patterns as opening and closing moves, reduced forms, text connectives, symbolization and emoticons. Alternatively, three semi-structured interviews were conducted to gauge the participants’ motives underlying the selection of particular discourse features.

The findings revealed that students, despite many statements to the contrary, were aware of the socio-cultural conventions governing email writing style and could write status-appropriate email messages, which rightly reflected the etiquette of email communication within an academic context.

The findings may offer certain benefits to EFL teachers and students.

The paper highlights understanding of a specific social group in relation to their interaction with different status social groups in the context of a specific communication technology and to some extent the perceived effectiveness of such approaches by those invoking them.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the circumstances that have conditioned the development of education in Spain from the enlightenment to the present day.

Multidisciplinary scientific approach that combines the interpretation of the legal texts with the revision of the doctrinal and theoretical contributions made on the issue.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the history of education in Spain has been marked by constant fluctuations between the reactionary instincts, principally maintained by the Catholic Church and the conservative social classes, and the progressive experiments, driven by the enlightened and the liberals first, and the republicans and the socialists later. As a consequence of that, the fight for finishing with illiteracy and guaranteeing universal schooling underwent permanent advances and retreats, preventing from an effective modernization of the Spanish educative system. On the one hand, renewal projects promoted by teachers and pedagogues were inevitably criticized by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, obsessed with the idea of preserving the influence of religion on the schools. On the other hand, successive governments were weak in implementing an educational policy which could place Spain at the level of the other European and occidental nations.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, although the country has overcome a good part of its centuries-old backwardness, increasing economic difficulties and old ideological splits keep hampering the quality of teaching, gripped by neoliberal policies which undermine the right to education for all. The reading of this paper offers various historical clues to understand this process.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how business executives perceive and account for their use of paratextual cues as a means of managing their professional impressions in business e‐mails on their smartphone (i.e. BlackBerry, iPhone, etc.) and office computer. Design/methodology/approach – Semi‐structured, audio‐recorded telephone interviews were conducted with a representative sample of 60 business executives from various sectors in Canada. The interviews examined executives' typical ways of writing e‐mails for business purposes, both on their smartphone and office computer. All interviews were transcribed and then analyzed using a mix of quantitative and qualitative analyses. Findings – This study shows how organizational leaders vary their ways of opening and closing business e‐mails when comparing their smartphone to their office computer communication. To account for these differences, they routinely use folk categories that suggest distinctions between formal and informal relationships, internal and external communication, as well as the recipient's identity and their own. Hence, executives are aware of the social meanings inscribed in paratextual cues and even the absence of these cues is frequently used as a cue in itself. Originality/value – E‐mailing is a crucial part of contemporary corporate communications, yet few studies have examined organizational leaders' e‐mail writing practices on their smartphone in relation to their office computer. While executives might seem very task‐oriented in their communication, this study shows that their everyday e‐mail‐writing practices play an important role in the co‐construction of professional identities and relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a seventh grade mathematics lesson in Iran and Japan through a comparative analysis for illuminating what actually goes on in the classroom in different cultural contexts. Emphasis is here placed on Iranian oral and Japanese literal teaching traditions.

Qualitative research methods were employed for data collection, including cross-cultural lesson analysis meetings in Iran and Japan and semi-structured interviews with the participants of the meetings. In doing this, the study plans to make apparent the structure of meaning hidden in lesson practice – a so-called cultural script of teaching – by comparing this practice in cultural context, through the eyes of educators from different socio-cultural perspectives.

The findings are intended to clarify the mathematical communication approach used in Iran and Japan. Mathematical communication proceeds through speaking rather than writing in Iran, discussing before summarizing and taking notes (speaking/listening), while in Japan, it proceeds through writing before telling and speaking (writing/reading).

This study delivers a transnational learning opportunity for educators to learn how to provide evidence-based analysis of a lesson for professional learning to raise the quality of teaching. However, as this is a case study, it opens up the possibility for comparative lesson analysis of more sample lessons, and how active learning and dialogic teaching can be designed in different educational contexts. In addition, it may be interesting for educators to see how this comparative lesson analysis helps practitioners to revise their teaching. These are very important research questions which the researcher hopes to cover in his next manuscript.

Comparative lesson analysis has the potential to expand more “research in practice” for designing mathematics lessons from the perspective of the students – so-called “customized teaching.” In addition, how the silent process of each individual student in the lesson has impacted on their learning and understanding – so-called “personalized learning” – is one of the issues arising from the case studies.

The value of comparative lesson analysis as a lens is in its ability to reveal to educators their own unconscious teaching script. It provides an opportunity for evidence-based critiques of our own teaching traditions that we accept culturally, share tacitly and may not even be aware of in the construction process.

This study combines careful measurement with “insider” and “outsider” perspectives to provide a deeper understanding of the real world of the classroom and the cultural context of teaching.

This case presents students with an opportunity to develop a set of performance metrics based on four strategic goal statements. The setting is a highly ranked U.S. MBA program. Students are given some basic, limited-but-sufficient contextual information about the school to get a sense of its heritage, avowed differentiating characteristics, and important foci.