Dominant Narrative (dominant + narrative)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Rereading the Dominant Narrative of Mentoring

CURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 4 2000
Alexandra Semeniuk
Mentoring is currently being promoted as an effective means of easing new teachers' transition from preservice programs to the profession.. At the same time it is seen as a way of providing teacher development for those teachers with more experience. Furthermore researchers promote mentoring as a force for change to diminish isolation and promote teacher collaboration. In this article I present an overview,the dominant narrative,of some recent research on formalized mentoring programs in education. Bringing this material together reveals that researchers are virtually unanimous in their enthusiasm for these initiatives. A dialogue which took place between me and a colleague/friend about what we construed as our mentoring relationshippotentially serves as a counternarrative to this prevalent story. Through an analysis of the educational research and the personal narrative, I suggest that the widely accepted view of mentoring may need to be reread, particularly in relation to language: mentoring's meaning is now imprecise because it is used as an umbrella term for many kinds of affiliations in teaching. Inrereading our narrative I argue that my colleague/friend and I did not act as each other's mentor. Rather, our professional association became entwined with the friendship we developed over time. I maintain that by doing a similar rereading of the research on mentoring in education we might find richer and more precise language to describe how we as teachers can assist one another in becoming sophisticated professionals. [source]


Early modern stereotypes and the rise of English: Jonson, Dryden, Arnold, Eliot

CRITICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2006
NICHOLAS McDOWELL
Stereotyping is a mode of stigmatisation and polarisation, and so we tend to think of the stereotype as a deadening force which closes down conversation. But we need to appreciate further the extent to which the transmission of stereotypes can facilitate and shape creative cultural response, even if that response is designed to simplify and satirise in the service of an ideological imperative. The stereotype of the Puritan as ignoramus in Ben Jonson's seventeenth-century comedies reappears in, and helps to structure, aesthetic discussions over three centuries, beginning with Dryden's post-Restoration literary criticism. These discussions were central to the generation of a dominant narrative of English literary history, to the development of notions of literary refinement and politeness and to the construction of a literary canon. Incorporated by Matthew Arnold and T. S. Eliot into their versions of literary history - versions which were themselves a response to what Arnold and Eliot perceived as the cultural crises of their own time - early modern dramatic stereotypes became naturalised in university courses and school textbooks. Ultimately, this essay suggests, the transmission of the early modern stereotype of the Puritan was bound up with the rise of English as an academic discipline. [source]


Rereading the Dominant Narrative of Mentoring

CURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 4 2000
Alexandra Semeniuk
Mentoring is currently being promoted as an effective means of easing new teachers' transition from preservice programs to the profession.. At the same time it is seen as a way of providing teacher development for those teachers with more experience. Furthermore researchers promote mentoring as a force for change to diminish isolation and promote teacher collaboration. In this article I present an overview,the dominant narrative,of some recent research on formalized mentoring programs in education. Bringing this material together reveals that researchers are virtually unanimous in their enthusiasm for these initiatives. A dialogue which took place between me and a colleague/friend about what we construed as our mentoring relationshippotentially serves as a counternarrative to this prevalent story. Through an analysis of the educational research and the personal narrative, I suggest that the widely accepted view of mentoring may need to be reread, particularly in relation to language: mentoring's meaning is now imprecise because it is used as an umbrella term for many kinds of affiliations in teaching. Inrereading our narrative I argue that my colleague/friend and I did not act as each other's mentor. Rather, our professional association became entwined with the friendship we developed over time. I maintain that by doing a similar rereading of the research on mentoring in education we might find richer and more precise language to describe how we as teachers can assist one another in becoming sophisticated professionals. [source]


Escaping Violence, Seeking Freedom: Why Children in Bangladesh Migrate to the Street

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 2 2007
Alessandro Conticini
ABSTRACT In Bangladesh, as in many developing countries, there is a widespread belief amongst the public, policy makers and social workers that children ,abandon' their families and migrate to the street because of economic poverty. Ignoring and avoiding mounting evidence to the contrary, this dominant narrative posits that children whose basic material needs cannot be met within the household move to the street. This article explores this narrative through the analysis of detailed empirical research with children in Bangladesh. It finds that social factors lie behind most street migration and, in particular, that moves to the street are closely associated with violence towards and abuse of children within the household and local community. These findings are consistent with the wider literature on street migration from other countries. In Bangladesh, those who seek to reduce the flow of children to the streets need to focus on social policy, especially on how to reduce the excessive control and emotional, physical and sexual violence that occur in some households. Economic growth and reductions in income poverty will be helpful, but they will not be sufficient to reduce street migration by children. [source]


Identity narratives of Muslim foreign workers in Japan

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2003
Akiko Onishi
Abstract This article examines the identity and acculturation experience of Muslim foreign workers in Japan. The psychological impact of prolonged stay in a foreign country was studied by eliciting narratives of experiences of 24 male foreign workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Iran who had been in Japan more than 5 years. By analysing the narratives they produced, three different styles of stories emerged which explained their experiences and their attempts to maintain or construct a sense of identity. Accepting the dominant narrative of Japanese society and describing oneself as ,almost like Japanese' was one way. Another strategy stressed the rejection of the dominant narrative as well as attempts to maintain the original narrative of the self as educated and active young men. The third narrative showed how individuals re-defined themselves as Muslim by incorporating religious identity into a central part of their self-concepts, and asserting its pervasive effect on all aspects of life. This study provides a perspective for acculturation research focused on social elements of identity, and derived from experiences in a relatively mono-cultural society recently opening to immigration and in which there is a prevailing ideology of assimilation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


A Narrative-Based View of Coexistence Education

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES, Issue 2 2004
Gavriel Salomon
Collective narratives of groups in conflict,their perceived histories, beliefs, self-image, and those of their adversaries,play a central role in interpreting and fueling the conflict,and, thus, can play an equally central role in facilitating coexistence. One of their main correlates is their implied delegitimization of the "other's" collective narrative, its pains, its sufferings, its history, and its aspirations. It is this deligitimization that ought to be the main target for change if coexistence is to be promoted, including the acknowledgement of one's own contribution to the conflict. Four dilemmas are discussed: coexistence programs for the dominant versus the subordinate groups; possible counterproductive outcomes; resistance against antagonistic, dominant narratives; and the problem of short-term intervention programs. [source]