Responsiveness to students' mathematical thinking is a characteristic of classroom discourse that reflects the extent to which students' mathematical ideas are present, attended to, and taken up as the basis for instruction. Using the Mathematically Responsive Interaction (MRI) Framework and data from 11 middle-grades classrooms, we illustrate…

Science talk is central to learning in the classroom but despite a variety of interventions, lack of participation in discussion is a persistent obstacle to learner engagement (Clarke, 2015; Mercer, 1996; Mercer et al., 1999; Webb, 1989). Classroom programs may aid student participation but have not been sufficient to overcome students'…

Research exploring students' learning from physical and virtual labs has suggested that on the whole, students learn science content just as well, if not better from virtual labs as they do from physical labs. However, the affordances of physical labs might support the learning of specific skills and competencies that are just as crucial for…

Much has been written recently about the role of talk in content-area learning, including science learning. However, there is still much to be learned about how teachers begin to engage students in the kinds of peer-to-peer conversations that help them make sense of their investigations in science and that advance their conceptual understandings.…

This case study examines the role of playful talk in negotiating the "how" of collaborative group work in a 6th-grade science classroom. Here we develop and test a Vygotsky-derived hypothesis that postulates playful talk as a mechanism for identity exploration and group status negotiation. Our findings indicate that students utilized the…

This study reports on the types of academic talk that contribute to enhanced explanatory responses, reasoning, problem-solving and learning. The study involved 10 groups of 3-4 students who were provided with one of three linguistic tools (i.e. Cognitive Questioning, Philosophy for Children and Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR)) to scaffold…

UK national initiatives in education, such as the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies, have been implemented to improve learning and raise standards. These initiatives place considerable significance on whole class interactive teaching, and political rhetoric makes great play of this pedagogic strategy. Teachers have been encouraged to use…