About the Book

This book addresses Mohan's (1986) concept of a social practice, an educational activity that can be considered as action in a frame of meaning, or a "knowledge framework" (KF). The KF, grounded in systemic functional linguistics, is a heuristic that provides both a theoretical framework for researching the language of social practices and a springboard for organizing lessons that can help teachers bring explicit language development into content teaching. This volume brings together the latest research on using Mohan's SFL-based theory at institutions of higher learning.

One outcome of this book is to show how a functional approach to language research can be a major tool for research in the experiential tradition of John Dewey who, as a pragmatist, regarded knowledge functionally "as arising from an active adaptation of the human organism to its environment" (www.iep.utm.edu/dewey). Another outcome is to illustrate the complexity of the role activities play in education.

This is the first book to examine the linguistic demands of the activities that occur in higher education. It provides empirically grounded examples of how Mohan's work is being implemented in universities worldwide. It thus adds to conversations addressing the use of educational activities to teach and describe disciplinary literacy and the integrated development of language and content.

Table of Contents:
1. A Knowledge Framework Approach to Linguistic Research and Teaching Tammy Slater 2. Corpus-based Knowledge Framework Analysis: A Deliberation of Methodology and Outcomes Elena Cotos, Iowa State University 3. Student Academic Writing: Situated Enactment of Genre, Argument, and Knowledge Structure Constant Leung, Kings College London 4. Perceived Effectiveness of AWE: Focus on Forms, Focus on Meaning, and Interactional Modifications Aysel Saricaoglu (University of Ankara), Evgeny Chukharev-Hudilainen (Iowa State University) & Hui-Hsien Feng (National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan) 5. Coaching as Activity/Social Practice Carolyn Kristjansson (Trinity Western University, Canada) & Bernard Mohan (University of British Columbia) 6. Voting as a Social Activity: Voter Suppression, the Common Good, and Evidence Bernard Mohan 7. Disciplinary Differences in the Knowledge Structures in University Lecture Slides Zhi Li, University of Saskatchewan 8. Causal Explanations in Physics: A Functional Analysis of EFL Lectures and Textbook Excerpts Kimberly Becker (Iowa State University) & Xiaoping Liang (California State University, Long Beach) 9. Online Teacher Training Using the Knowledge Framework and the Teaching–Learning Cycle for Literacy Development Stephanie Link (Oklahoma State University) & Jesse Gleason (Southern Connecticut State University) 10. Opportunities and Challenges of the KF for In-service Teacher Development: A Case Study Jingzi Huang & Margaret Berg, both at University of Northern Colorado 11. The Knowledge Framework for Building Teacher Awareness of Language in Content Instruction Jesse Gleason & Elena Schmitt (Southern Connecticut State University) 12. Learning and Using the Knowledge Framework as a Language and Content Teaching Unit Project: A Case Study Amy Walton & Gulbahar H. Beckett, both at Iowa State University 13. The Role of Functional Recasts in EFL Undergraduate Students’ Learning of Intercultural Communication Masaki Kobayashi (Kanda University of International Studies, Tokyo) & Emi Kobayashi (Kyoai Gakuen University) 14. Enhancing Disciplinary Learning Experience through an Adjunct English-Across-the-Curriculum Model Esther Tong, Cecilia Pun, & Phoebe Siu, all at Hong Kong Polytechnic University 15. Implementing the KF in a Content-based Language Teaching Classroom Hong Ma (Zhejiang University) & Jian Zhou (Hangzhou Normal University) 16. Knowledge Structures as Designs: Tracing Patterns Across Textual Trajectories Diane Potts, Lancaster University