Suchergebnisse

This volume examines the sociocultural factors that influence language choices and uses in the multilingual country of Luxembourg. Patterns of language use within and across communities are viewed in terms of interrelationships among language policy intent, implementation, and experience. The study considers the ways in which the language and social experiences within low socioeconomic communities differ from school expectations and how these differences affect achievement of both individual and government goals. A history of past language policies and practices sets the background for recent policy formation and current language uses and values. An investigation of the roles of reading, writing and speaking within school settings illustrates policy implementation and individual usage. The ways in which policy is experienced is described in terms of the number and extent of language functions within communities. The nature of language experience is reflected in ethnographic descriptions of the roles language and literacy abilities play in social life. These descriptions are presented in terms of patterns of language use across socioeconomic groups and through composite case studies of three families representing upper, middle and lower class backgrounds. Community and school language behaviors are then compared across socioeconomic groups through an analysis of the degree of congruence between reading, writing, and speaking functions outside of the school and the in-school norms and methods of language instruction. The study further explores the practical and theoretical implications of the relationships among policy intent, implementation, and experience in the context of socioeconomic transitions in modern multilingual nations.

AbstractThe Motivate, Adapt, and Play Program was specifically designed as an adapted physical activity (PA) program for students with intellectual disabilities (ID) to meet required school PA policies to combat childhood obesity. The policies commonly require a minimum of 30 min of PA per school day. A study was undertaken to test the efficacy of the program. Twenty‐five students with ID (9 girls, 16 boys; ages 9.7 ± 1.2) from four elementary schools in the southeastern United States participated in the study. The health‐related fitness measures of the 16‐m shuttle run test, the modified curl‐up test, and the back‐saver sit‐and‐reach test were completed at the beginning and at the end of an 8‐week period. Body mass index (BMI) measurements were also obtained. During the interval, participants completed a 30 min/day, 5 days/week activity program, focusing on cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, and muscular strength and endurance activities, utilizing specialized equipment. Over the 8 weeks, there was a significant increase in the health‐related fitness scores obtained. As expected, there was a slight decrease in BMI over 8 weeks, although it was a nonsignificant finding. The findings suggest that the health‐related fitness of students with ID can be improved through engaging in a school‐based daily adapted PA program.

This volume is the result of a colloquium on socio-political dimensions of language policy and language planning held at the 1997 American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Conference. The focus is on language planning and policy in the USA, but the issues raised will be applicable to other parts of the world as well.Three broad issues are addressed: general aspects, case studies dealing with certain languages or ethnic groups, and language planning in practice. The first, general, part, provides a historical analysis of language planning and language policy in the US, and proceeds to deal with maintenance and loss of indigenous languages, and the constraints imposed by current policies and how these constraints can be effectively dealt with. The second part contains a number of case studies. It discusses aspects of planning policies pertaining to pidgin languages, gestural languages used by the deaf (ASL) and constraints in foreign language education; this part also raises issues relating to ethnic groups, concentrating on the position of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in the US. In the third part some practical issues are raised by looking into the role of language and culture in teaching reading, foreign language policy in higher education, Hawaiian language regenisis, and gender neutralization in American English.The book is a tribute to Charlene Junko Sato, a sociolinguist and a language activist. She died in 1996 and will be remembered for her work not only in linguistics, but also for her dedication in advancing Hawaiian Pidgin, influencing language policy through various publications and court-room appearances.

Introduction -- Language policies and ideological analyses -- Engaged ethnography as transformative -- Language policy processes -- Planning resistance and discovering alternatives -- Developing relevant and engaging language policies and practices -- Afterword: Language policy rights and resources

Methodologies to measure gender-based violence (GBV) have received inadequate attention, especially in humanitarian contexts where vulnerabilities to violence are exacerbated. This paper compares the results from individual audio computer-assisted self-administered (ACASI) survey interviews with results from participatory social mapping activities, employed with the same sample in two different post-conflict contexts. Eighty-seven internally displaced adolescent girls from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 78 Sudanese girls living in Ethiopian refugee camps were interviewed using the two methodologies. Results revealed that the group-based qualitative method elicited narratives of violence focusing on events perpetrated by strangers or members of the community more distantly connected to girls. In contrast, ACASI interviews revealed violence predominantly perpetrated by family members and intimate partners. These findings suggest that group-based methods of information gathering frequently used in the field may be more susceptible to socially accepted narratives. Specifically, our findings suggest group-based methods may produce results showing that sexual violence perpetrated by strangers (e.g., from armed groups in the conflict) is more prevalent than violence perpetrated by family and intimate partners. To the extent this finding is true, it may lead to a skewed perception that adolescent GBV involving strangers is a more pressing issue than intimate partner and family-based sexual violence, when in fact, both are of great concern.