Teachers are often perplexed realizing students ending up with different understandings of the same lesson after attending the same class. This study investigates the use of Variation Theory as a pedagogical design tool in improving students' problem-solving skills in trigonometry. This action research utilizing the 'Learning Study' approach was…

This study examined 94 bilingual and emergent bilingual 10th grade students' perspectives on multimodal composing for academic purposes in their English Language Arts class. A social semiotics theoretical framework was employed to understand students' views of the affordances and constraints when composing three digital multimodal projects--a…

Purpose: This study was conducted in ninth- and tenth-grade classrooms with the goal of studying effective scaffolding for improving argumentative writing, both conventional and digital/multimodal. Design/methodology/approach: The author conducted a formative experiment in two high-school classrooms to study ways teachers integrated forms of…

If educators want to engage girls in learning, they must align teaching practices with girls' specific needs. In a study modeled after Reichert and Hawley's study of boys, the authors learned that lessons with hands-on learning, elements of creativity, multimodal projects, and class discussions all worked to stimulate girls'…

In this article, I document a series of pedagogical responses in my high school instrumental music classroom following the events of Eric Garner's murder in New York City. Foregrounding traditions of black radical politics and aesthetics originating with the Black Power Movement in the 1960s, I explore their implications for classroom practice in…

Conceptions of literacy in the secondary English language arts classroom today have expanded in multiple directions, moving far beyond former emphases on reading comprehension and writing ability. This article presents the efforts of two secondary English language arts teachers in the Midwestern United States to expand the meaning of literacy in…

This study examined whether the application of conceptual change texts are effective before or after the instruction on 10th grade students' conceptual understanding and alternative conceptions about acids and bases. The study was conducted with 76 10th grade students from three classes of a chemistry course taught by the same teacher. One of the…

Public schools face raised performance expectations on group-administered achievement tests. In response, educators have implemented various preparation strategies to ready students. However, the research community largely ignores the impact of setting on test performance. This randomized field trial assesses whether or not there were significant…

Background: When writing a text, students are required to do several things simultaneously. They have to plan, translate and review, which involve demanding cognitive processes. In order to handle this complexity, writers need to develop a writing strategy. The two most well-defined writing strategies that have been identified, are those of a…