This book gives educators important answers to the urgent question of how teachers and schools can facilitate language minority and immigrant students' progress in school. It offers an innovative and powerful method teachers and students can use to study the situational context of education, providing both the theoretical background and the practical tools to implement this approach. The situational context of education includes linguistic, economic, social, cultural, and political factors, as well as conditions, such as students' personal characteristics, family support, and quality of instruction. All of these factors influence the lives of students and their academic performance and contribute in many ways, some subtle and indirect, to making the educational experience more or less difficult for different students. The premise of the book is that objective study of the situational context of education by both students and teachers is beneficial because it leads to a more realistic view of how to facilitate students' progress in school. Designed as a text for graduate courses for preservice and in-service teachers working with students in bilingual, ESL, mainstream, and special education classrooms, the goal is to engage readers in learning not only from the literature but also from studying the situational contexts of their own students. The focus here is on the factors that affect language minority and immigrant students in the United States, but the framework is equally powerful for work with student populations in other social contexts. *The Introduction includes an overview of the theory behind the study of the situational context of education and the implementation of this approach; describes the context of the pilot lessons included in the book; and explains how to use the lessons detailed in later chapters. *Chapters 2-6 focus on different factors in the situational context of education: linguistic, economic, social, cultural, and political. A three-part structure is used: "Classroom Implementation" (a rich description of one lesson in a real classroom); "Context Variables" (a theoretical explanation of the specific factor the chapter addresses, providing the research basis for the sample lesson objectives ); "Doing Analysis of the Context" (several sample lessons for implementation). The lessons are addressed to the teacher, with detailed ideas on how to carry out the lesson and evaluate the students' understanding of the situational context. *Five Appendices provide helpful resources for the implementation of the lessons: an Annotated bibliography of relevant K-12 children's literature; Instructional Approaches; Scoring Rubrics for Content Objectives; Guidelines for a Contrastive Study of Situational Context; and Lesson Template. The lessons have been thoroughly field-tested with students and teachers. Because these lessons work on multiple levels, Situational Context of Education: A Window Into the World of Bilingual Learners benefits students from first grade through preservice and in-service teachers in university courses. Teachers get to know their students and their predicaments within the social context of the United States, and at the same time, the lesson activities have a great impact on the students in their classes. All are helped to achieve academically while gaining awareness of situational factors affecting their lives.

This book gives educators important answers to the urgent question of how teachers and schools can facilitate language minority and immigrant students' progress in school. It offers an innovative and powerful method teachers and students can use to study the situational context of education, providing both the theoretical background and the practical tools to implement this approach. The situational context of education includes linguistic, economic, social, cultural, and political factors, as well as conditions, such as students' personal characteristics, family support, and quality of instruction. All of these factors influence the lives of students and their academic performance and contribute in many ways, some subtle and indirect, to making the educational experience more or less difficult for different students. The premise of the book is that objective study of the situational context of education by both students and teachers is beneficial because it leads to a more realistic view of how to facilitate students' progress in school. Designed as a text for graduate courses for preservice and in-service teachers working with students in bilingual, ESL, mainstream, and special education classrooms, the goal is to engage readers in learning not only from the literature but also from studying the situational contexts of their own students. The focus here is on the factors that affect language minority and immigrant students in the United States, but the framework is equally powerful for work with student populations in other social contexts. *The Introduction includes an overview of the theory behind the study of the situational context of education and the implementation of this approach; describes the context of the pilot lessons included in the book; and explains how to use the lessons detailed in later chapters. *Chapters 2-6 focus on different factors in the situational context of education: linguistic, economic, social, cultural, and political. A three-part structure is used: "Classroom Implementation" (a rich description of one lesson in a real classroom); "Context Variables" (a theoretical explanation of the specific factor the chapter addresses, providing the research basis for the sample lesson objectives ); "Doing Analysis of the Context" (several sample lessons for implementation). The lessons are addressed to the teacher, with detailed ideas on how to carry out the lesson and evaluate the students' understanding of the situational context. *Five Appendices provide helpful resources for the implementation of the lessons: an Annotated bibliography of relevant K-12 children's literature; Instructional Approaches; Scoring Rubrics for Content Objectives; Guidelines for a Contrastive Study of Situational Context; and Lesson Template. The lessons have been thoroughly field-tested with students and teachers. Because these lessons work on multiple levels, Situational Context of Education: A Window Into the World of Bilingual Learners benefits students from first grade through preservice and in-service teachers in university courses. Teachers get to know their students and their predicaments within the social context of the United States, and at the same time, the lesson activities have a great impact on the students in their classes. All are helped to achieve academically while gaining awareness of situational factors affecting their lives.

A style is any pattern we see in a person's way of accomplishing a particular type of task. The "task" of interest in the present context is education-learning and remembering in school and transferring what is learned to the world outside of school. Teachers are expressing some sort of awareness of style when they observe a particular action taken by a particular student and then say something like: "This doesn't surprise me! That's just the way he is. " Observation of a single action cannot reveal a style. One's impres sion of a person's style is abstracted from multiple experiences of the person under similar circumstances. In education, if we understand the styles of individual students, we can often anticipate their perceptions and subsequent behaviors, anticipate their misunderstandings, take ad vantage of their strengths, and avoid (or correct) their weaknesses. These are some of the goals of the present text. In the first chapter, I present an overview of the terminology and research methods used by various authors of the text. Although they differ a bit with regard to meanings ascribed to certain terms or with regard to conclusions drawn from certain types of data, there is none theless considerable agreement, especially when one realizes that they represent three different continents and five different nationalities.

The shift towards a sociolinguistic approach to the analysis of language in the last few decades has necessitated new definitions for a number of concepts that linguists have taken for granted for a long time. This volume attempts to demystify the important notions of ‘text’ and ‘context’ by providing clear definitions and examples within the assumptions of Systemic Functional (SF) linguistics. After a discussion of the role and significance of context by three eminent SF linguists in section one, the influence of context on text is dealt with in section two ‘From Context to Language’. Section three ‘From Language to Context’ considers textual features and their relationship to contextual factors. All the contributors base their analyses on data collected from a variety of spoken and written registers of contemporary English.

Der Chemieunterricht sieht sich nicht erst seit PISA mit dem Anspruch konfrontiert, einerseits die Lernenden von der Relevanz des Faches zu uberzeugen und andererseits zu gewahrleisten, dass sie genug vernetztes Konzeptwissen erwerben, um eine naturwissenschaftliche Berufslaufbahn wahlen zu konnen. An diesem Spannungsfeld setzt die vorgestellte Studie an: anhand eines experimentellen Designs wird der Erwerb von Wissen in lebensweltlichen im Gegensatz zu fachlichen Kontexten evaluiert. Funf Experimentierphasen dienen als Grundlage, um die Effizienz der jeweiligen Kontexte in Verbindung mit wiederholenden Vernetzungsmassnahmen zu untersuchen. Die gewahlten Messinstrumente ermoglichen hierbei eine detaillierte Beschreibung der Effekte der Interventionsmassnahmen beim kooperativen Arbeiten im Chemieunterricht. Especially since the weak results of German students in large-scale assessments like PISA, chemistry education has been challenged: It is supposed to bridge the gap between making it relevant to the learner and ensuring that learners acquire enough content knowledge to cope with university demands. The presented study emanates from this ambiguity by evaluating the acquisition of content knowledge in different contexts. By means of an experimental design, student learning gains in tasks with a real life problem situation are compared to a laboratory setting. A one-week intervention serves as a basis to assess the effects of such contexts in a collaborative and inquiry-based learning environment. The selected test instruments offer the possibility to shed light on differentiated effects of contexts with relation to learner prerequisites.

This text includes a selection of commissioned and classic articles that introduce a range of theories of second language acquisition and the contested explanations of effective language learning.

This book addresses an important, yet under-researched domain in interpreting education: how theoretical training models should be responsive to context. To do so, it applies the linguistic concept of ‘context’ to interpreting studies by investigating practices in representative (conference) interpreting training programmes in Europe and China. After presenting an overview of interpreter training programmes, the author describes the need to reassess the applicability of the well-established and widely accepted model of interpreting from the Paris School (ESIT/AIIC model) to the Chinese interpreting training scene. Building on the theoretical study of context in foreign language classrooms suggested by linguists like Halliday and Hasan (1993); Kramsch (1993) and others, the author subsequently constructs a new curriculum, comprising a four-step approach to consecutive interpreting courses in the Chinese context. The rationale for such an approach is justified in accordance with the overall design of context, taking into account the four dimensions in a teaching–learning environment. This book is intended for scholars and graduate students who are interested in translation and interpreting, applied linguistics as well as foreign language education. It also serves as a practical guide for developing (university-level) translation and interpreting programmes.

School Leadership in Diverse Contexts demonstrates the centrality of context to understanding school leadership. It offers varied portrayals of leadership in a diverse range of distinct settings. Each chapter highlights the prominence of context in understanding the realities of school leadership, focusing on issues and influences that school leaders face, strategies school leaders adopt to deal with the complexities of their work, and conceptualisations of school leadership relevant to the context. An impressive array of international experts examine this neglected area of research by considering school leadership in nine heterogeneous contexts, providing rich and varied portrayals of school leadership and suggesting ways in which the leadership may be enhanced. School Leadership in Diverse Contexts is an ideal book for undergraduate and postgraduate students, particularly those studying units in educational leadership, comparative education and educational policy. Similarly undergraduate and postgraduate students engaged with development studies, history, sociology, law, human geography will be attracted to this text.

The chapters in this book all address the significance of the relationship between the aims and methods of language teaching and the contexts in which it takes place. Some consider the implications for the ways in which we research language teaching; others present the results of research and development work.