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This chapter discusses the nature of the current standards environment and what might be our best response. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are K-12 content standards, developed in English language arts and mathematics, to illustrate the curriculum emphases needed for students to develop the skills and concepts required for the 21st century. Adopted by 45 states to date, the CCSS are organized into key content strands and articulated across all years of schooling and, in most cases, replace the existing state content standards. Research studies have demonstrated that differentiated curriculum for the gifted in language arts enhances critical thinking in the subject area, including analysis of text and other critical reading behaviors. Curriculum design and implementation for gifted and advanced learners in the present age of content standards requires careful delineation of the standards at both a general education level and a gifted and advanced level.

This chapter sets out to provide a descriptive, yet critical exploration of the complex nexus of history and policy of English language education (ELE) in Bangladesh. The intention is to combine ‘history’ and ‘policy’ in order to develop a wholesome understanding of ELE policy (ELEP) development process and its impacts in Bangladesh. In reviewing pertinent historical and education policy reports, the analysis identifies a series of influences, a clear indication of conflicts of ideologies deriving from macro-sociopolitics – the imposition of colonisation, the idealism of nationalism, and the emergence of globalisation in the process of developing ELEP in the country. The chapter then explores the outcomes of the tensions informing the current ELE landscape of Bangladesh. The chapter concludes by arguing for a reassessment of the present socio-political and economic context of Bangladesh so that a context-based, inclusive, and appropriate ELEP could be developed to reap and maximise the benefits of ELE in the longer term.

HBO Europe (HBO Central Europe’s pre-2012 incarnation) opened its office in Budapest in 1991. It then set up 14 national branches. Four of them (Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, and Bucharest) established original-programming departments responsible for supplying localized content to the HBO cable and on-demand services, positioning HBO᾽s brand in the region. Since HBO Europe recruited experienced UK producer Antony Root as VP of Original Programming, a three-tier production strategy has emerged. HBO Europe started producing licensed TV series, adapted for each of the four countries. The aim was to test local markets and prepare for bigger-budget original series and event miniseries. Nurturing regional talent and US-style development practices was crucial to maintaining the local content’s cultural specificities while enhancing its quality. A critical reading shows how this discourse on creative freedom, localization, and quality serves branding purposes and fits in with HBO᾽s strategy to pre-empt competition from Netflix and other OTTs. Based on in-depth interviews with executives, producers, and writers from Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest, the chapter analyses the increasingly complex and tense relationships between HBO and the traditionally strong PSB networks.

Using examples from the pivotal summer of 2016 as anchor points for discussion, this chapter explores the contexts for a number of contemporary phenomena: reading as part of a franchise experience; the ebb and flow of format success (including e-reading and audiobooks); the profound disruption caused by tablets and smartphones; the maturing of the World Wide Web, which turned 25 in 2016; and early concerns about the exploitation of algorithms on social media. It then turns to the significance of people being able to choose freely what they want to read, investigating the inter-connections between voluntary reading, book ownership, access to text via other platforms, and a variety of forms of achievement. It investigates the complexities of defining evidence of reading success through two examples: the National Endowment for the Arts’ regular surveys of literary reading and App Annie’s presentation of a wide variety of temporarily successful apps. Finally, it explores contexts of reading under the labels of situated and dedicated reading; and it subdivides these categories into considerations of social, deep, and critical reading.

Developing critical thinking via reading is a way through which students can be empowered to transform knowledge. Studies indicate that critical thinking should be at the core of reading because it is vital in evaluating the arguments as well as for the transformation of knowledge (Freire, 1985; Facione, 1992). However, the way critical thinking is understood in Iran, as a collectivist society, varies from the way it is conceptualised in individualistic societies, such as in the West (Atkinson, 1997). In the West, it tends to be based on evidence in support of a point of view, fairness in argument and systematic analytical investigation of a concept open-mindedly conveyed by mature reasoning and judgement (Facione, 2011). In Iran, the focus of reading is on memorisation and the routinised reproduction of texts, and critical thinking is often seen as an unfavourable act of criticising others. This study, through semi-structured interviews, reports on five Iranian university students to explore how they conceptualise critical reading and thinking, and the relation between these and knowledge transformation and knowledge production. The study utilises Van Dijk’s (2011) ideology critique approach as it is relevant to knowledge and power in the light of traditional Persian literary scholars and explores how criticality, albeit differently, has always also been a Persian construct.

This chapter makes an argument for extending the analytical scope of theories of possible selves, from their original location in psychology linking self-concept to motivation (Markus and Nurius, 1986), to encompass more sociologically informed notions of the self and temporality. It argues that the notion of possible selves is potentially productive in theorising because it points to the importance of the self and agency as key concerns in understanding student and others’ behaviour and the ways these are shaped by policy. The chapter outlines a view of theorising and its role in empirical research and argues that possible selves provides a theory of the middle range that is helpful in conceptualising empirical research. It draws on theoretical work on temporality and sociological theories of the self to offer a more critical reading of theories of possible selves. The chapter shows how some initial research on students’ understanding of their learning was reconceptualised in terms of the self and temporality and how in subsequent research ‘possible selves’ was explicitly used to provide a critical conceptual framing.

This chapter seeks to recover Ibn Khaldun's contributions to political economy as an attempt to rebuild bridges between the two worlds that are traditionally separated by time and culture. The task of reconstruction relies on a critical reading of Ibn Khaldun's introduction (the Muqaddimah) to his magnum opus, the Kitab al-'Ibar or 'Book of Lessons,' as well as an engagement with scholarly commentaries sheltering interdisciplinary horizons. Ibn Khaldun sees speculation, verification, interpretation, and deeper knowledge as crucial elements in identifying the true causes of events. This quest inevitably directs inquiry into the rise and decline of civilizations. The chapter offers a synoptic picture of the confluence of the religious and the secular in Ibn Khaldun's reflections on political economy in the The Muqaddimah. It focuses on Ibn Khaldun's philosophy of history and political economy, but especially the ethical considerations that attend wealth creation.

GENERAL George C. Bond and Nigel C. Gibson, eds. Contested Terrains and Constructed Categories: Contemporary Africa in Focus. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2002. xxii + 474 pp. Bibliography. Index. $100.00. Cloth. $42.00. Paper. It is clear from reading this comprehensive book that a number of problems have become inherent in the way Africa as an idea and African studies as a discipline are taught and analyzed, primarily in North America. As the editors make clear, these failings are inseparable from how Africa has been defined historically and continues, tragically, to be misexplained, misrecognized, and therefore critically and analytically mislocated in the academy. The book is divided into three parts ("Challenges and Modes of Thinking"; "Contested Categories"; and "Violence of the World/Violence against the Body") comprising sixteen separate essays that address what may be categorized as "pressing" topics. These range from understanding power to the critical reading of colonial cartography, from the writing of African economic history as one component of the important project of cognitive decolonization to the postcolonial recasting of the now celebrated issue of African poverty, and finally how AIDS and other forms of violence against the body are, beyond their physically measurable aspects, culturally and socially formed and perpetuated. Contested Terrains is based on invited papers presented at Columbia University and intended to respond to problems of African misrepresentation. They include an impressive array of both descriptive and analytical counterpoints that aim to deconstruct the previously established body of fabrications and "exoticizing" (via different emphases and approaches) that have underpinned African studies in the past. The book's focus extends to social, economic, cultural, and health-related issues, with a well-organized and diverse array of topics. From my perspective, it accomplishes the important feat of analyzing these issues comprehensively without obscuring the big picture. This picture must, of course, combine a critical understanding of the past with current political and cultural categories that define problems and prospects for development and that may be particular to Africa. Clearly, any new work that deals with contemporary Africa must look to the past, not only to understand the continent's now familiar development difficulties, but also to be able to respond strategically to the newly emerging trends of institutional delegitimation and concomitant state collapse (e. …

In this talk, Jerome Harste and Vivian Vasquez signify the importance of students becoming agents of text who seek out ways of inquiry and multiple ways of meaning. They demonstrate that children need “to get” literacy into their lives. This talk gives a glimpse of the modern-day classroom and its literacy practices. Through their discussion of critical literacy, Dr. Harste and Dr. Vasquez highlight the need for curriculum choices to be in the hands of those who interact directly with children.

there seem to be two general categories of answers to the ques tion of what reading is. One centers around such phrases as trans lating symbols into sound, saying words, getting meaning from the printed page. The other may be stated as bringing personal mean ing to the printed page, reacting to the ideas, evaluating the author's recorded thoughts, gaining increased understanding through experiencing the recorded understandings of another. The first group obviously involves the mechanics, the super ficial (not by any means unnecessary) phases of reading, while the latter involves the deeper, more personal, more truly significant aspects of reading. Both phases must be constantly in the aware ness of both learners and teachers, with the major emphasis on the second aspect from the very beginning stages on through life. In fact, since the only purpose of the first or mechanical aspect is so that the second or true reading can take place, mechanics should be brought into the learning process only as and when specifically needed by a particular individual as when lack of knowledge or a skill is getting in the way of his significant reading. This would mean elimination of the routine teaching of all the mechanical skills to all of the children.

This comprehensive and lucid study, first published in 1985, reconstructs the history of Western Marxist theories of the breakdown of capitalism. It provides a critical reading of theories of breakdown, with their conflicting interpretations of a single text, their invulnerability to empirical defeat, and their retreat from class analysis, as events in the history of ideas. This study traces the sources of theoretical conflict in a series of historical and epistemological issues that shift over time and generate new conditions for speculations concerning the fate of the system. In seeking to understand that durability of the concept of breakdown, the author raises important questions about the social conditions and consequences of theoretical work and the status of critical thought in society. This title will be of interest to students of history and economics.

This article explores the materialist reading of culture developed by C.L.R. James. Central to James’s approach was his refusal to respect the implicit segregation between “high” and “low” or “intellectual” and “popular” forms of culture. In important respects, the article argues, it is precisely because James begins from an analysis of the practices and audiences of popular sport that his approach to the analysis of literature is as valuable as it is. In particular, the article emphasizes three lessons which James appears to derive from his willingness to think carefully about the political and sociological meanings of sporting practice: first, his attention to the embodied and time-bound nature of cultural reception; second, his consistent rejection of a “determinist” reading of culture; third, his insistence on the necessity of continuing to make evaluative judgements with regard to cultural creativity.

This chapter examines gender as constructed, represented and reproduced in mass media texts of print, television, film, and popular music. We examine gender representations and stereotypes in popular western mass media. Production practices that create gender positioning and audience choice of media texts and their response to gender representations are also examined alongside. Importantly, we look at the complexities of engaging with media literacy and the deeper notions of critical media literacy. The questions we ask are: Is media literacy an act of critical reading of print and audiovisual texts, critical viewing of television, films, or advertising? Or, does it encompass all of the above and also move toward a critical, reflective, indeed, autonomous stance, so that viewers and readers can gain greater control over the complex ideological and discursive influences exerted by media? The chapter begins with a brief definition and history of media literacy, proceeds to examine stereotypes in the media, and concludes by highlighting the importance of a critical reading practice.

This chapter turns to problematize the term overseas Chinese ethnic minorities, which in recent years become common in Chinese scholarly works and state pronouncements in relation to diaspora politics. By focusing on the official overseas Chinese ethnic minorities policies, the chapter aims to provide an understanding of why, how and with what implications the official stress on ethnic unity has permeated the Chinese official discourse and policy-making agenda related to overseas Chinese work. It is based on a critical reading of official pronouncements and policy documents dealing with overseas Chinese ethnic minorities, and online official and public texts, supplemented by interviews with Chinese scholars and government officials conducted during research trips to Beijing, Kunming in Yunnan province and Nanning in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. This chapter reflects on how the multiethnic national model celebrated by the Chinese state at the domestic level translates at a transnational level.

1. Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations: An Introduction Amitav Acharya and Richard Stubbs 2. Is ASEAN Powerful? Neo-realist versus Constructivist Approaches to Power in Southeast Asia Sarah Eaton and Richard Stubbs 3. Who's Socializing Whom? Complex Engagement in Sino-ASEAN Relations Alice D. Ba 4. Establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum: Constructing a 'Talking Shop' or a 'Norm Brewery'? Hiro Katsumata 5. The English School and ASEAN Shaun Narine 6. Neither Skepticism nor Romanticism: The ASEAN Regional Forum as a Solution for the Asia-Pacific Assurance Game Tsuyoshi Kawasaki 7. Rescuing Constructivism from the Constructivists: A Critical Reading of Constructivist Interventions in Southeast Asian Security See Seng Tan

Introduction In order to be able to practise evidence-informed nursing an appreciation of what research is, the different approach to research, why we need it and the ethical considerations are essential. The intention of this chapter is to provide the reader with an introduction to these key elements of research awareness. The focus of this chapter is on research methodology to enable nurses to gain an understanding of research to inform their critical reading of it. You may well want to evaluate research findings as a precursor to implementing them in your own professional practice. This may include single research reports that you access. There are now initiatives that enable nurses to gain access to reports that have systematically considered the evidence for clinical interventions. These are of two types – systematic reviews and meta analysis. The former are systematic reviews of all theavailable research reports on a given clinical intervention that meet the necessary standards for inclusion. If a number of researchers then come to the same conclusion, it increases our confidence that the intervention has a ‘real effect’. Meta analysis involves the combining of data from a number of studies that have used exactly the same methods and procedures and then analysing the combined data.