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This article offers an example of how to use embodied learning effectively in online education. The discussed assignment is designed for classes in rhetoric, visual communication, or public memory, and places pedagogical research in conversation with scholarship in visual, aesthetic, and rhetorical communication. This type of digital aesthetic pedagogy embraces the notion that ways of seeing and sensing are fundamental to the production of knowledge and subjectivity in digital spaces. Instructors who use these types of assignments can bridge what is termed the "affective gap" in online education by increasing student self-efficacy, helping students value course content, and embedding learning into their everyday lives.

This unit teaches students how to perform racial rhetorical criticism and positions them to engage in discussions of race through experiential learning, namely through exploring the links between rhetoric, public memory, and campus history projects. Courses: Rhetorical Criticism, Rhetorical Theory, Communication Theory. Objective: Students will gain a better appreciation of racial rhetorical criticism as a research method through an analysis of campus architecture.

In this essay, I argue that the queer phrase "it's giving" can teach the concept and practice of rhetorical criticism while also performing a queer rhetorical pedagogy. The proposed activity proceeds in three steps: teaching queer histories, defining rhetorical criticism in queer terms, and practicing criticism queerly. This approach develops students' critical historical knowledge, theoretical repertoire, and practical academic skills. Courses Rhetorical Criticism, Rhetorical Theory, Communication Research Methods, Critical Research Methods, Queer Theory. Objectives The first content-focused class in a course on rhetorical criticism must define criticism as both a concept and practice. I argue that both ends can be achieved while enacting a "queer rhetorical pedagogy" (Morris, C. E. 2013. Sunder the children: Abraham Lincoln's queer rhetorical pedagogy. The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 99[4], 395--422) via the teaching template inspired by the phrase "it's giving." "It's giving" provides in-roads for instructors to incorporate queer history into their coverage of rhetorical histories. It also performs a queer vernacular in a traditionally heteronormative academic space. The first objective of this activity is to offer students introductory descriptions of what rhetorical criticism is. The second is to demonstrate how to do rhetorical criticism. The third is to achieve both these ends through a queer rhetorical pedagogy. The first content-focused class in a course on rhetorical criticism must define criticism as both a concept and practice. I argue that both ends can be achieved while enacting a "queer rhetorical pedagogy" (Morris, C. E. 2013. Sunder the children: Abraham Lincoln's queer rhetorical pedagogy. The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 99[4], 395--422) via the teaching template inspired by the phrase "it's giving." "It's giving" provides in-roads for instructors to incorporate queer history into their coverage of rhetorical histories. It also performs a queer vernacular in a traditionally heteronormative academic space. The first objective of this activity is to offer students introductory descriptions of what rhetorical criticism is. The second is to demonstrate how to do rhetorical criticism. The third is to achieve both these ends through a queer rhetorical pedagogy.

This article examines the power of special topoi to characterize the discourse of literary criticism, and through emphasis on rhetorical action, it sheds light on the limitations of topos analysis for characterizing research articles in disciplinary discourse more generally. Using an analytical approach drawn both from studies of topoi in disciplinary discourse and rhetorical genre theory, I examine a representative corpus of 21st-century literary research articles. I find that while most of the special topoi recognized by Fahnestock and Secor and Wilder remain prevalent in recent criticism, contemporary literary critics tend to draw on only a select subset of those topoi when making claims about their rhetorical actions. The topoi they use most often--mistaken-critic and paradigm--help identify the ways knowledge-making work is undertaken in literary criticism, a discipline often considered epideictic rather than epistemic. But what the special topoi do not capture is precisely the distinctly motivated, actively epistemic character of this disciplinary rhetoric. Based on these findings, I suggest that special topoi must be seen as functioning in the context of the rhetorical action undertaken by literary research articles. These articles undertake not simply persuasion but the particularly humanistic act I refer to as contributing to scholarly understanding: a rhetorical action worth attending to for scholars of disciplinary discourse, because it is deliberately more concerned with practice than product.

Intersectionality is core to contemporary feminist rhetorical criticism. It is also a complex concept with great potential for promoting social change by shifting discourses about identity in the public sphere. Therefore, communication scholars have a vested interest in teaching the basics of intersectional criticism to undergraduate and graduate students across the humanities, especially in upper-division undergraduate communication courses that deal with rhetorical criticism, feminist rhetorical theory, women and or gender studies, social movements, critical cultural studies, media studies, or other related topics. I recommend teaching intersectionality as an analytic framework for rhetorical criticism with second-wave feminist music. The unit begins by briefly overviewing the key goals and rhetorical tactics of second-wave feminists. Students then read intersectional criticism of second-wave rhetoric and criticism of rhetorical theory that fails to consider the intersectional experience of identity. The unit culminates with students working in groups to conduct an abbreviated rhetorical criticism of popular music associated with the United States's second wave of feminist movements. The abbreviated rhetorical criticism asks students to analyze the embodied and situated components of musical argumentation. They present their findings to the class in a multimedia presentation that engages many sensorial and rhetorical possibilities, much like music does. Courses: Rhetorical Criticism, Feminist Rhetorical Theory, Women/ Gender Studies, The Rhetoric of Social Movements, Critical Cultural Studies, Media Studies. Objectives: In this unit, students will learn how to analyze second-wave feminist rhetoric through an intersectional lens using musical case studies. First, students will study the history of second-wave feminist movements. They will then read about the core tenants of intersectional thinking before exploring how rhetorical critics use intersectionality as an analytic framework. Next, students will engage popular music with feminist messages that emerged during the second wave in an abbreviated rhetorical criticism textured with historical context and focused on embodied experiences of musical appeals. They will present their findings in a multimedia format for their classmates. By the completion of this unit, students should learn to apply intersectional theory to an analysis of a musical rhetorical tactic and to identify the strengths and weaknesses of that tactic.

In this study, we explore discussions of literature in a high school English Language Arts (ELA) classroom, examining how students read rhetorically. Reading rhetorically considers the ethical effects of narrative content as it is mediated through character dialogue and action, narrator discourse, and the author's organization: a narrative as a story told to someone for some rhetorical purpose. Drawing from rhetorical narratology, we analyzed data collected in a 12th-Grade ELA classroom during student-driven Socratic seminars to ask: how did students address the ethics of various narrative situations as they talked about literature? We found that youth engaged in interpretive discussions that grappled with the complexities of ethical positioning in narrative. We argue that ELA classrooms are key spaces to help students examine how narratives act on readers, how readers act on narratives, and the ethical dimensions of such interpretive work.

Students rarely question the relevance of most communication courses. For example, most students realize that courses focused on improving public speaking and interpersonal skills will benefit them personally and professionally after graduation. Convincing them that a rhetorical theory and criticism course is equally empowering can be a bit more challenging. This essay explores one approach for teaching rhetorical theory and criticism as uniquely relevant in the educational experience of communication students. By applying various rhetorical perspectives to artifacts that resonate with students' actual lived experiences, students become empowered advocates for positive change.

This study assessed 1,706 eighth-grade students' reasoning abilities through a critique task in an integrated argumentative reading and writing test. Results indicate that the majority of students did not detect fallacious arguments or clearly explain problems in the arguments. They encountered various challenges in critiquing an argument: (a) being off-task, (b) failing to identify fallacious arguments, (c) having difficulty explaining specific problems in reasoning, and (d) not connecting their criticisms with particular parts of the text being critiqued. Task design and instructional implications are discussed.

The full text of the speech given by President Barack Hussein Obama in Chicago after he won a second term in office as US President has been broken into its minimal communicative speech acts. This strategy has been used to analyse and understand how the whole speech is consistent with the cooperative maxims of Quality, Quantity, Relation and Manner. Being a corpus-based work the study goes through the Rhetorical Criticism Approach with the Textual Analysis as the method at hand. The resulting interpretation shows that President Obama's speech fascinated and positively affected his listeners' emotions because it was highly consistent with all the four maxims of Cooperation, that is, the speech was cooperative in design. With these results we can confirm that the cooperative quality of a political speech is crucial to the audience's appreciation of the speaker and the value of his public talk.

Abstract of a thesis is the brief and accurate representation of the thesis, with the important function of persuading readers to read on the thesis. So how the writer constructs the abstract and wins readers' recognition is our main focus. On the basis of Burke's Identification Theory, this paper analyzed 10 abstracts from "Nature" from content and form perspective respectively. The results show that identifications by sympathy, by antithesis and by inaccuracy are three main content identification strategies and conventional form is the main form identification strategy, which combine together to improve the objectivity and persuasion of abstracts.

Courses: Rhetorical Criticism, Cultural Rhetorics, Public Memory Studies. Objective: This activity introduces undergraduates to ideological criticism as a method of rhetorical criticism by illustrating the co-constitutive nature of ideology and rhetoric to universities occupying colonized lands, waters, and airways.

Courses: Rhetorical Criticism, Communication Theory, Communication Research Methods, Introduction to Communication Studies. Objectives: This is an introductory exercise that acquaints students with rhetorical criticism as a means of communication inquiry. By the end of the exercise, students will be able to: understand symbols as connected and contextual; define terms such as text, reading, criticism, and rhetoric; explain close reading and rhetorical criticism; and perform introductory-level rhetorical criticism.

One long-held belief in archival education is that physical primary sources engage students more effectively than digitized sources do. This investigation questions that belief by analyzing whether and to what extent the format of a primary source impacts student engagement and learning, using a controlled study of students in a business ethics course. The findings suggest that, in instruction requiring the rhetorical analysis of a primary source, digitized primary sources may engage and contribute to student learning just as effectively as physical sources. These findings have significant implications for primary source pedagogy.

Courses: Rhetorical criticism, public address, persuasion, public memory theory, argumentation. Objectives: Through analysis of public controversies about Confederate monuments on college campuses, students will: (1) explore the concept of "public memory," how groups of people form shared interpretations of the past; (2) examine how monuments act as rhetorical texts that embody disparate public memories for different groups of people; and (3) engage in rhetorical analysis to learn how public memories are often constructed to serve present interests rather than to preserve accurate accounts of the past.

This study investigated the rhetorical move structure of the education research article genre within the framework of Swales' (1981, 1990, 2004) move analysis. A corpus of 120 systematically sampled empirical education research articles served as data input for the analysis. The results indicate that the education research article methods section is characterized by structural complexity and rich, nuanced description. Education researchers generally employ three rhetorical moves to realize the overall communication purpose of the methods section: 1) "Describing the research design," 2) "Describing data collection procedures," and 3) "Describing data analysis procedures." While the first is optional and has no constituent steps, the second and the third have a series of constituent steps, with the second being obligatory and the third optional. The moves provide very detailed information on different aspects of the methodology. This complexity and richness of information are, to a large extent, related to the qualitative aspect of much of education. Pedagogically, the results can inform ESP [English for Specific Purposes] or EAP [English for Academic Purposes] syllabus design and materials development and hence improve classroom instruction.

In this article, the author uses storytelling to retell moments in the history of our field. Using personal anecdote alongside critical race theory and critical whiteness studies, she critiques the Writing About Writing movement by re-situating it in history: first narrating it as a contemporary of the Translingualism movement, and then comparing it with Mina Shaughnessy's Errors & Expectations. These two sets of narrative, historicized foils allow the author to develop a portrait of the Writing About Writing movement as a colorblind countermovement to the translingualism movement, a bid for power in the white context of academic institutions at a moment of austerity in the first decade of the 2000s. Instead of the Writing About Writing movement's colorblind and ahistorical portrait of what writing scholars know, the author tells stories that center translingualism and Students' Right to Their Own Language as central concepts to the study of rhetoric, composition, writing, and literacy.

Through an ecological and autoethnographic analysis of a repository of diachronically archived texts written over a period of six years in multiple cultural, geographical, and disciplinary contexts, the author unfolds his materialized experiences of coming to terms with, embracing, and composing with rhetorical differences as spatiotemporal relationality and affordances.

Courses: Public Speaking, Rhetorical Criticism, Persuasion, Political Communication, and Media Communication. Objectives: By the end of this activity, students should be able to: explain the key components of Lloyd Bitzer's rhetorical situation; assess and navigate various conditions affecting various speaking situations; conduct audience analysis as it relates to given speaking situations; and adapt messages to cater to specific rhetorical situations.

Political memes are argumentative visual texts commonly encountered on social media. Through the strategic combination of imagery and captions, a political meme presents information as fact about a topic, an individual, or a specific group. The power of political memes can be attributed to their viral nature and their effects on public discourse and perceptions. To critically read a political meme, students must be equipped with critical media literacy skills. This article describes how action researchers engaged 56 middle school students in the rhetorical analysis of political memes with the goal of supporting critical media literacy skills through practical application. The two-week study took place in the Southeastern United States at a rural school. Students determined that the political memes created false binaries, appealed to group identities, drew on macro and micro sociopolitical contexts, and used strategic visual arrangements to form an argument. Critical media literacy is imperative given the prevalent and viral nature of media and its effects on people and public policy.

Logical reasoning skills are important for a successful mathematical learning and in students' future career. These skills are essential for a primary school teacher, because they need to explain solving methods and solutions to their pupils. In this research we studied pre-service primary school teachers' logical reasoning skills. The results show that only one third of the students gave an argumentation for their answer: a very small percentage gave a complete, correct argumentation for the solution of the problem; one fifth of the students had an incomplete argumentation, missing important steps of the logical reasoning; and one tenth of the students made mistakes in their reasoning. These results highlight the importance of developing future primary school teachers' logical reasoning skills.

This article offers an analysis of the dimensions of consensus on education using Diane Ravitch's statement: "The single biggest problem in American education is that no one agrees on why they educate." The interesting problem is to determine which consensus on educational issues varies, whose consensus it is, and how and why it varies. The author analyzes consensus on an issue in three dimensions: its breadth, its depth, and its span. The breadth of the group's consensus is the agreement captured by the ambiguity or vagueness of either the definition of the group or the statement of the issue. The number of specifications needed to adjust the original formulation to the level of some kind of implementation is the measure of its depth. The "span" of consensus is obtained by comparing the agreements across issues for a given group. The author summarizes that consensus on an issue can fail to reach fruition in many ways. The consensus may be an illusion of breadth, resting merely on ambiguity or vagueness. The consensus may disappear as the costs of implementation, its depth, are revealed. The consensus on one issue, in the context of restricted resources and competing concerns, may not carry the implementation forward despite persisting through an exploration of its depth. (Contains 6 notes.)

Internationalization at the university level may be envisioned in various ways. Often, it is considered along the economic dimensions: money in, money out; international fees; and international articulation possibilities for both education and business. Harris (2008) argues for a less economic, more cultural interpretation of internationalization. Otherwise, internationalization is in danger of degenerating (or translating) into instrumentalism and consumerism. This paper focuses on the classroom where so many students themselves are international beings and looks at how faculty might manage, integrate, and learn from this classroom-level reality.

Study abroad has become, at least rhetorically, a core element in U.S. post-secondary education. For those who practice study abroad and have dedicated themselves to leading students, managing programs, or theorizing the role of study abroad in its relationship to the academy generally, the meaning of their work is powerfully shaped by rhetorical frames produced by college administrations and granting institutions. In this essay the authors call for a new way of framing the work of study abroad. They argue that study abroad should deliberately position itself as an activist force in the service of global survival. They propose a new model for understanding the work of study abroad, Critical Study Abroad. Critical Study Abroad is a structured way of framing ones's work with direct reference to the current state of the world, and it suggests concrete changes in the work of study abroad programs. The authors examine nine ways in which Critical Study Abroad can respond to global crisis. Over the past century, several rhetorical frames or discourses have been used to justify the sojourn of U.S. students in foreign locations. For the purposes of this essay, the authors focus on three of these broad discourses: (1) class reproduction; (2) idealist internationalism; and (3) political internationalism. Although each discourse arose in a unique historical moment, elements of all three still shape the rhetoric used to describe contemporary study abroad programs. (Contains 48 notes.)

In this article, I discuss implications of the discourse and rhetoric of dyslexia advocacy and of recent state policies for the preparation of literacy professionals. I then synthesize reflections on my experiences teaching and learning about dyslexia and reading difficulties within university-based schools of education, and in trainings offered by publishers of commercial reading programs. Here, I draw a distinction between being trained to deliver a program and developing a professional knowledge base for the teaching of reading. I use these reflections to identify two goals for university-based graduate programs aimed at ensuring equity and inclusivity in the current policy context.

Popular culture aids in the conditioning of U.S. society, assisting in the determination of who is esteemed as literate and who is disgraced with illiteracy. Unfortunately, pop culture depictions of black male literacy often reify the stereotype that black males are less literate than their peers. Although a real issue presents itself in the opportunity gap that exists between black males and other racial groups, however, focusing on the negative fails to complicate the narrative. The purpose of this article is to confound monolithic representations by acknowledging positive, nuanced, and complex black male literacy practices. The author uses critical rhetorical analysis and positioning theory to highlight Netflix's "Luke Cage" series as a site where empowering literacy practices prevail. For educators, the author suggests using a critical rhetorical analysis of popular culture to examine and question content that presents static representations of black male literacy.

Over the last couple of years, White nationalist groups have been at the forefront of American political life, especially with the events in Charlottesville, Virginia. The historical roots of White nationalist movements run deep in the United States and are most closely associated with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). In this article the authors explore the history of the KKK outside of the South and how this oft-neglected history gets at elements of intergenerational and intragenerational occlusion. Next, we discuss the type of angry political rhetoric used by the KKK. Finally, a series of activities are provided. These activities enable students to see the presence of the KKK outside of the South, break down elements of intragenerational and intergenerational occlusion as it relates to the Klan, and confront angry political rhetoric in the racist messages of the KKK. These activities give students experience to analyze the messages of White nationalist movements to prepare them as future citizens to counter such rhetoric on the local, state, and national level.

Our aim in this article is to examine the relationship between theory and practice in Finnish teacher education from the 1960s to the present. We identify four different periods to represent this relationship based on our analysis of national committee and evaluation reports. Theory and practice gradually converged, culminating in a research-based agenda that reflects the current situation. This relationship between theory and practice also reflects the ideal teacher of different times and what a teacher's working orientation should be. We use rhetorical analysis and the concept of a "philosophical pair" introduced by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca to interpret this development.

Courses: Rhetorical Criticism, Composition, Environmental Communication. Objectives: This unit activity, for which students view a documentary to identify and evaluate persuasive ethos and then create their own rhetorical messages for reducing food waste, serves as a platform for teaching both the critique and practice of rhetoric, as well as familiarizing students with the complexities of the global food system and food waste.

Current Educational Reform in Japan is oddly captured with confused conceptions of "compulsory education." The Ministry of Education blankets such connotations of it, as a national budget system, mandated school curriculum, responsible partnership of school with community and accountabilities of local school board, in defense of vested national budget against decentralization promoted by prefectural governors. However, the extended usage of "problems of compulsory education" results in the confusion of educational policies. This is because the core issues of current reforms are not concerned about whether school education should be compulsory or not, but on the future design of the public education system. This paper displays some historical aspects of the concept of "compulsory education," in order to enlighten the reason why the issues of it are expanded and unclear. Indeed, most people have confused the concepts of "public education," "public school system," "general education," "compulsory education" and "national education." In pre-war days, the compulsory education system was not launched in the early stages of modernization, but in 1886, when the first educational minister, Arinori Mori, legally designed the public education (general education) system to be established in the nation state. His idea of the "compulsory education" was characteristic. Though it was legitimated by "national education" constructed with "general education" or "public education," its financial foundation was not based on a national budget but school fees were paid by parents. This system was reorganized just after his assassination. "Compulsory education" became a nationalistic regime through which people were educated to be loyal subjects and obedient to the nation. At this point, the national budget system obtained its legitimacy for the foundation of national education. In postwar reform, the legitimacy of "compulsory education" was placed on education as a human right under the renewed constitution, connecting it with the human right to live, while most people have not recognized its significance. Thus, the concept of "compulsory education" is a puzzle in contemporary debates of educational reform. This paper explores the complicated relationship of "compulsory education" to the national budget system, through rethinking about the historical process of the public education system in Japan. [This article was translated by Walter Dawson.] (Contains 1 note.)

Critical educators, particularly Critical Race pedagogues, critique colorblind ideology as tantamount to racism because it serves to maintain racial inequality. King (1991), for example, refers to colorblindness as "dysconscious racism" since colorblind ideology sustains and justifies the culture of power. As an attempt to unpack the colorblind model that so many pre-service teachers endorse, the author made the most of her own teaching experience as a teacher educator, reflecting analytically on classroom discussions and student reactions. What she found most vexing was that colorblind ideology seemed so well-intentioned that it was hard to fight against. Apparently, she was not alone: in scholarly journals, she located the stories of a number of teacher educators who struggled to problematize liberal discourse in their classrooms. Also, she collected first-hand interview data by talking with teacher educators (her colleagues) who have taught multicultural issues. These interviews were conducted in a dialogue format rather than as structured, formal interviews, and these dialogues occurred as the interviewed instructors and she casually talked about their dilemmas and quandaries. This study thus incorporates the spirit of the self-study method in the sense that it emerged from her own quandary and that her goal was to improve teacher education practices, including her own. The self-study has gained increasing legitimacy and popularity during the last ten years as a methodological stance in teacher education. From her interviews and scholarly articles, the author gleaned a multitude of information about the colorblind rhetoric that propels pre-service teachers' beliefs on education and race. In this paper, the author identifies and details the ideological constructs of colorblind rhetoric. These constructs are: the apprenticeship model, the nationalistic/assimilationist stance, the deficit perspective, meritocratic belief, and the neoliberal/postmodernist framework.

A first glance at almost any policy document generated by a bilateral or multilateral donor agency reveals a familiar rhetoric of participation, partnership, community, good governance, growth and strong democracy as key ingredients for a successful development program. While some critics of this rhetoric argue that this is merely a recasting of old aid agendas, others confirm that recent rethinking of aid policies and agendas are sincere efforts to address poverty reduction and ensure aid effectiveness. Education has been proposed as an indispensable element to achieving the aforementioned goals of development policy rhetoric, not least in the Eight UN Millennium Development Goals. This paper examines the role of the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) in the current global development environment, with particular focus on education policy in the Asia Pacific region. How does AusAID's education policy align with international goals for poverty reduction and sustainable development? How does AusAID coordinate its education policy priorities with other development agencies and recipient governments? To enable an exploration of these questions, this paper provides a comparative analysis of AusAID's approach to its educational development programs in Papua New Guinea and Cambodia.

Over the past two decades, higher education in advanced capitalist societies has undergone a process of radical "reform". A key element of this reform has been the introduction of a number of accounting-based techniques in the pursuit of improved accountability and transparency. While the "old" accounting was to do with stewardship, the "new" accounting is to do with performance. In accordance with the performance principle, the publishing companies and the higher education funding bodies have engaged in ranking exercises. These exercises impact on all aspects of academic life as the entities that are ranked and rated include universities, disciplines, journals, and academics and their "outputs" in teaching and research. This paper explores the genesis and the consequences of the performance discourse. It argues for a philosophical separation of the notions of accountability and accounting. Furthermore, it raises the issue of academic accountability as something that exceeds the logic of accounting. (Contains 7 notes.)

The managed university functions as the prominent organizational paradigm in higher education. Returning to Max Weber's original analysis of bureaucracy, several fundamental characteristics of the managed university come to surface, including the emphasis on specialization, hierarchy, and secrecy. Among these characteristics is the importance of communication and rhetoric to the enterprise. Despite embodying the spirit of rationalism, bureaucracy employs a mode of organizational subjectivity reflective in the language practices of the system. Within the managed university, manipulations of discourse obscure the increasingly bureaucratic nature of the university and expand organizational control over campus culture.

"Scholarship Reconsidered" by Ernest Boyer generates a flurry of theoretical and applied activity. Much of the research centers on the concept of the scholarship of teaching as researchers explore what constitutes scholarship, which is often misdirected. Through lexical statistics and rhetorical analysis, the text is examined according to its overall intent with attention given to the scholarship of teaching. Results reveal the scholarship of teaching is a minor but important role and the text is intended for the renewal of the academy and society. Conclusions balance research based concepts advanced by scholars with the text's intent. (Contains 2 tables.)

Stasis theory is a powerful tool for rhetorical analysis, recently under fresh consideration by rhetorical theorists (e.g. Gross) and scholars who identify its utility in the writing classroom (e.g. Carroll). In this study, the author applies stasis theory to a paleontological argument involving a controversial fossil, "Protoavis texensis." Discourse related to the controversy is examined under the lens of the "staseis," and the application of stasis theory to visual components of argumentative texts associated with scientific communication is explored. This study applies stasis theory to science discourse based on the work of Lawrence Prelli; Frans van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst, and Francisca Snoeck Henkemans; Mark Turner; Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor; and others. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)

The risk posed by explicit instruction in composition is that the reduction of writing to stock moves and effective devices may diminish the writer's agency and guarantee reproduction of the teacher's. The advantage of explicit instruction is power: overt and recursive attention to selected strategies can help students imagine the public agency the instruction itself may temporarily suspend. This study argues that growth in student writing can follow from replacing problem-solving assignments (based on the problem-solving strategies found in "Freakonomics") with rhetorical-analysis assignments. In this latter kind of assignment, the four features of explicit instruction that this study found empowering are (1) paying attention to how published writers frame problems; (2) labeling the framing move as a rhetorical design on readers; (3) weighing the effects of such designs on readers; and, in a rhetorical analysis of "Freakonomics," (4) rewriting an already-framed problem. Such instruction is necessarily preliminary to, but also part of, reflective inquiry into the ethics of the conventions, practices, and aims of teaching and learning academic writing.

The SACE Review report, Success for All, completely ignores two important issues, namely, (a) the portability of the certificate, and (b) the nature of secondary schooling in a future that is set in a global world. The Review saw the South Australian education system operating in a context that was limited to the geographical and cultural boundaries of the state. This paper discusses both of these issues that appear to require the resolution of conflicting and incompatible problems. In conclusion the paper considers the changing nature of schooling and the role of alternative education in both schools and programs and rejects the continuance of comprehensive schooling at the upper secondary school level within a bureaucratic education system. The paper argues that different types of schools should be gradually established through the self-management and self-governance of schools by the communities served and the choices made by the students who attend the schools and their parents, and who support them while they are engaged in upper secondary education.

The SACE Review proposes that a set of knowledge, skills and dispositions called capabilities should form the core of the new SACE. As the Review emphasises, there must be widespread, systematic research and discussion on the range and nature of the capabilities. The SACE Review suggests five capabilities as a basis for discussion. This paper is offered as a contribution to that discussion through an analysis of the knowledge, skills and dispositions to which the Review refers. The paper identifies and analyses a presupposition of all the capabilities, the capacity to reflect, and argues the importance of the development of that capacity for the developing human being. (Contains 1 footnote.)

The South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE) is a credential and formal qualification within the Australian Qualifications Framework. A recent review of the SACE outlined a number of recommendations for significant changes to this certificate. These recommendations were the result of a process that began with the review panel "scrutinizing carefully [existing SACE structures for] continuing validity and effectiveness". This paper critiques the "careful examination" of statistical trends and patterns used to build the case for reform. Central to these trends and patterns are measures of retention, socio-economic status and student achievement, all of which are problematic. This paper also challenges the appropriateness of the statistical techniques used in the review. The paper concludes by arguing that making significant policy changes based upon such limited and flawed analyses is problematic. (Contains 6 tables and 5 figures.)

The South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE), introduced in 1992-93, is a credential and formal qualification within the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF). SACE was recently subjected to a review that led to a series of significant recommendations. These recommendations came out of a process that began with the Review Panel scrutinizing existing SACE structures for continuing validity and effectiveness. This paper critically examines claims made by the Review Panel of a resounding confirmation of the need for reform. Since the panel's claims are built upon qualitative data (community submissions), they are critiqued using widely-accepted standards for qualitative research. In particular, this paper examines the panel's evidence regarding "academic creep", the dominance of the academic pathway, and issues regarding the Tertiary Entrance Rank. The findings suggest that the panel's case for reform may apply more to government schools than to the SACE itself. This paper concludes that the case for reform is poorly developed and largely supported by research lacking transparency and unsuited to making generalizations. (Contains 5 tables.)

In the latter part of last year a Macquarie University academic aroused outrage with his comments over the supposed links between race and criminality. For his colleagues and the union alike, the case provided a difficult example of the clash of shared academic values and the right to speak. Here four participants in the controversy-- from NTEU's National President to colleagues--reflect on the thorny matters at issue. These include: (1) Beyond "Political Correctness" (Carolyn Allport); (2) Race Matters (Gillian Cowlishaw); (3) "It is Forbidden..." (Jennifer Rutherford); and (4) Legitimate Enemies (Judy Lattas). (Contains 15 endnotes.)

This article presents an excerpt of a declaration from the United States Department of Education's "Strategic Plan: 2002-2007." The declaration signifies in no uncertain terms that the battle waged by critics of alternative research methods continues, and is likely to intensify. The denigration of research methods which decline to adhere to the trappings of logical positivism may have begun with Rene Descartes, but the origins of the dispute between positivists and post-positivists reach much further into history. This analysis examines the dimensions of one such method of classical inquiry, rhetorical criticism, and, taking as an example the funding of public education, demonstrates the value of attending to the language of persuasion. Judging from the excerpt, it is a skill conservative policymakers practice all too well and one which the social foundations community may find beneficial in efforts to effect meaningful reform. (Contains 1 note.)