Background: The growing population of students that are learning science through a Content and Language Integrated Learning approach (CLIL) has led to concerns about these students' ability to fully participate in a rich classroom discourse to develop content knowledge. A lack of information about science development through classroom discourse in…

Establishing a communication-rich classroom can be difficult. This article describes the process and findings of a practitioner action research study addressing the question of how teachers can interact with their students while they are working in groups to encourage and enhance student-to-student communication. Recommended research-based teacher…

This article analyzes illustrative classroom events documented during an ethnographic study of bilingual classrooms in a "high-achieving" school. Through a performativity lens that emphasizes the discursive constitution of subjectivities, I demonstrate how discourses around achievement and success in the current reform context exacerbated one…

To be effective, thinking skills interventions are likely to require specific fine-grain changes in the quantity and quality of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil dialogue in the classroom, but these are difficult to establish. This study investigated the effects of collaborative philosophical enquiry over time on quantity and quality of interactive…

This system for describing teaching events is intended to facilitate the analysis of classroom observations for purposes of comparing, documenting, or evaluating different instructional techniques. The typology is designed to describe a wide range of settings and teaching styles. The descriptors are organized into two groups that simultaneously…

Designed to grade children's knowledge of commonly used instructional terms in a particular language arts program, the AIT consists of a verbal part and a situational part. Each part assesses the same commonly used instructional terms: word, begin, letter, name, makes sense, beginning sounds, print, trace, capital letter, rhyme, period, stands…

This document examines the concept of gender bias communication in the classroom and how educators can avoid it. Gender bias communication is a set of behaviors that reflect bias or stereotyping, but which is not against the law. In the classroom, a teacher may treat male and female students differently without even realizing it. For instance, a…

This report details an exploratory study that employs qualitative methods to characterize the academic language used by teachers and students in 4th and 5th grade mainstream science classrooms. Teacher oral language, and to some degree student talk, was observed during content instruction. This type of data allows for a broad descriptive…

The underrepresentation of women in science and engineering might be caused by certain differences in science training processes. This study investigated sex differences in classroom atmosphere and classroom behaviors of science teachers and students. Males were dominant in working on classroom displays and classroom activities. (YP)

Four hearing-impaired children (ages 9-11) with learning problems answered questions focused on picture description. The children understood question words but answered the questions incorrectly 75 percent of the time. The children had difficulty determining the topic of discourse, were confused by the sequence in classroom discourse, and relied…

A study related the communication responsiveness of instructors to the affective and cognitive outcomes of students in basic speech communication courses. Specifically, the study investigated both the instructors' overall responsiveness and their responsiveness as climate makers. The communication responsiveness of instructors was measured by the…

This paper discusses some of the results of a study conducted in Papua New Guinea on students' comprehension of 45 non-technical words used in science classes. Four words, "component,""devise,""exert," and "random," are considered in detail. (CW)

Students must have uninterrupted periods of time to process information, to reflect on what has been said, observed, or done, and to consider what their personal responses will be. After at least three seconds of uninterrupted silence, a significant number of positive outcomes occur for students and teachers. Students are more effective in…

The purpose of this study was to explore how the needs, actions, and beliefs of teacher and students interact with the constraints of the classroom and the curriculum to establish an atmosphere conducive to effective learning of physics in grade 11. An interpretive research methodology was used to investigate the students' and teachers' needs,…

Examines the theory of a causal relationship between classroom environments and junior high school students' attitudes towards the social studies, replicating the research methodology of a high school study. Environmental dimensions found to be related towards positive attitudes include teacher support, affiliation, innovation, and involvement,…