Job Discussion Forums

[ESL-XS]

Apparantley, It's the third annual conference this year (6th of May 2010).... are you going?!

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

[ESL-XS]

"never ceased to be amazed":

You must be a male teacher....

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

Alpha male, actually...

NCTBA

[ESL-XS]

"Alpha male"?!!

With an emiticon like that one YOU WILL think about yourself that way, won't you?!!

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

Yup, John's got nuttin' on me...Oorah!

NCTBA

[007]

[veiledsentiments]

[johnslat]

Dear veiledsentiments,

I'm not JUST an alpha. I am the alpha AND the omega.

Regards,
John

[ESL-XS]

Vieldsentiments..... I do mean AVATAR.... thanks


..... it's interesting to have ALPHA and OMEGA guys around! I wounder if there are any GAMMA males out there ? That would difinetley make it much more interesting!


Anyways... back to the KSAALT Conference..... any OTHER ideas?

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

[johnslat]

Dear NCTBA,

"John, although great...you are not God."

You sure about that, homie?

Anyway, the term "alpha male" has been pretty much discredited:

"However, substantiating this link turned out a more frustrating task than I had expected. For instance, I looked for primary sources I could turn to for a formal theoretical explanation of what explanatory work the term "alpha male" is supposed to carry out.

It seems that the term was originally coined by David Mech, who studied wolf packs in the 70's. Interestingly, Mech himself now claims the term was misunderstood and used improperly. Here is what David Mech says in a recent (2000) article:

The way in which alpha status has been viewed historically can be seen in studies in which an attempt is made to distinguish future alphas in litters of captive wolf pups [...] This view implies that rank is innate or formed early, and that some wolves are destined to rule the pack, while others are not.

Contrary to this view, I propose that all young wolves are potential breeders and that when they do breed they automatically become alphas (Mech 1970). [...] Thus, calling a wolf an alpha is usually no more appropriate than referring to a human parent or a doe deer as an alpha. Any parent is dominant to its young offspring, so "alpha" adds no information.

An informal survey of other literature suggests that "alpha male", referring specifically to the pack behaviour disowned by Mech, entered the popular vocabulary by way of dog trainer lore. My personal hunch is that it became entrenched thereafter because it had both a "sciencey" sound, and the appropriate connotations for people who adhered to certain views on gender relationships.

Stepping back to look at dominance theory as a whole, I found that they are not without problems. Pecking order may apply to chickens, but primates vary widely in social organization, lending little support to the thesis that dominance displays, dominance-submission behaviours and so on are as universal as Johnstone suggests and can therefore be thought to shed much light on the complex social organization of humans.

An often discussed example is the Bonobo chimpanzee, where females are dominant over males, and do not establish a dominance hierarchy among themselves, whereas males do; where the behaviours that tend to mediate social stratification is reconciliation rather than conflict, something that is also observed in other animal species, contrary to the prevailing view of dominance hierarchies."

http://lesswrong.com/lw/23h/the_many_faces_of_status/

So, I guess I'm just the Omega Man.

Regards,
John

[scot47]

The feline is wrong again. Scot47 will not be talking from ex cathedra this year. He will be a back-bencher, hurling insults at selected speakers. But not of course at the females !

[007]

[ESL-XS]

KSAALT Selected Speakers:

1. Plenary Speaker: Professor Tim Murphey � Kanda University of International Studies -Learners� Lives as Curriculum

2. Closing Speaker: Professor Reima Al-Jarf, King Saud University
Self-Improvement for EFL Students

3. Invited Speaker: Peter Lucantoni - Double session Content and Language Integrated Learning � CLIL


.......... more to follow.... keep watching the space!