Bibliography: #MU8FWL6L

key	MU8FWL6L
title	Contradictions in a Distance Content-Based English as a Foreign Language Course : Activity Theoretical Perspective
author	Madyarov, Irshat
item type	Thesis
publication year	2008
date	2008
abstract note	This study explores six English-as-a-foreign-language students in a content-based distance-education course on critical thinking from the Bahá’í institute for Higher Education (BIHE) in Iran. Framed within cultural-historical activity theory, the study explores the complex nature of students' course-related activities with a particular focus on contradictions that occur within any human activity. The examination of contradictions provides a theoretical framework in which understand the complex relationships among a number of elements in the distance-education course activity situated in a cultural setting beset with political controversies, technological challenges, and demands of the bilingual curriculum of the university. To capture the complex nature of contradictions, the study employed a naturalistic methodology and relied primarily on in-depth interviews with the participants, observations of their online behaviors, and the artifacts that student participants produced by the end of the semester. The findings indicate that most participants had multiple activity systems within the course environment, some of which were oriented towards academic and others nonacademic objects. Most participants had primary, secondary, and quaternary contradictions. Most primary contradictions had the nature of use and exchange value, which in practical terms indicates the orientation towards genuine learning or earning a grade. Primary and quaternary contradictions led to many secondary contradictions. Furthermore, it transpired that content-based instruction pushed the participants to engage actively in actions oriented towards improving English even for the participants who did not have the object of improving English. Among many other findings are detrimental consequences of contradictions that are traced back to the persecutions of BIHE students, faculty, and staff.
number pages	xii, 407
publisher	University of South Florida
place	Tampa, FL
language	English
manual tags	IRAN; PERSECUTION; EDUCATION; BAHA'I INSTITUTE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

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