Abstracts - Earli

in their first and second languages was related to the enactment of a series of speech events orcommunicative activities that were governed by distinct linguistic, relational and socio-culturalassumptions in each language. One of the principal implications of the study for second languagelearning and instruction is that L2 learning and teaching should be organised around speech eventsor activities as opposed to centring on isolated communicative acts as a good way to raise learners’pragmatic awareness in the target language.Creating potentials for learning through the visualJudith MacCallum, Murdoch University, AustraliaPeter Wright, Murdoch University, AustraliaKathryn Grushka, Newcastle University, AustraliaRobin Pascoe, Murdoch University, AustraliaJudith Dinham, Edith Cowan University, AustraliaVisual Education is an emerging field of practice. There is a compelling case for visual educationbased on the increasing dominance and importance of visual forms of communication, its role inleading creativity and innovation in shifts towards a ‘knowledge-based economy’, and indeveloping important understandings about each person’s sense of self and identity as well as theirplace in society. This paper presents a model of effective practice in visual education developed asone part of a large national research project. The model draws specifically on perspectives andpractices examined from purposive sampling of sites of effective practice, and focus groups andinterviews with teachers, students and art professionals. From a sociocultural perspective learningis mediated through signs (’psychological tools’) and tools (‘technical tools’), individual activityand social relations, which fundamentally shape and transform mental processes. The researchfound that effective visual education was situated in studio-based experience/activity that featuredworking with materials and relationships of trust, and the development of applied aestheticunderstanding. Students’ personal, social and cultural agency emerges from these practices. Thefull model developed from the analyses provides evidence of the processes used by teachers, withmeaning created and embedded within the learning setting, mediated by the tools being used andthe forms of interaction and relationships developed. Together, these provide the means forcreating learning potentials through the visual and the opportunity for learners to become effectiveand creative participants in an innovative visual society.Instructing with analogies : the rhetorics of analogical discourse in vocational traininginteractionsIngrid de Saint-Georges, University of Geneva, SwitzerlandBarbara Duc, University of Geneva, SwitzerlandLaurent Filliettaz, University of Geneva, SwitzerlandThis paper focuses on initial vocational training and apprenticeship in the technical fields ofautomotive mechanics, masonry and electronics in a “dual” learning environment, alternatingperiods in school and in the workplace. In these fields, instructors or teachers often mobilizeanalogical reasoning to explain technical gestures (filing, welding, mixing, rendering), positions orabstract notions linked to professional practices. Our interest is in probing the role of thisanalogical reasoning in educational situations by 1) studying when and to what extent apprenticesare exposed to analogical discourses both at school and in the workplace in their trajectory ofapprenticeship, 2) establish the formal and functional characteristics of these analogical registersfrom the point of view of a multimodal approach to discourse analysis, and 3) more generally,show the relevance and usefulness of a discursive approach for the study of educational situations– 96 –