This paper reports on a study that examined a Shared Education program recently implemented in Israel based on the Northern Ireland model. Sixth-grade children from two schools -- one Jewish and one Arab, who study in separate education systems and have very limited contacts with one another -- met to learn English (as an additional language)…

This paper investigates the impact of social interactions on mathematical language development in children during cooperative learning in a fourth grade mathematics classroom in Ireland. An experimental group completed mathematics activities in cooperative groups, while the control group completed these tasks individually. Participants from both…

This critical classroom study of language oppression draws from the notion of existing inequalities based on power relations in education research, as addressed in a critical ethnography. This critical classroom study explores the cases of two recent immigrant students, "Manuel" and "Malena," on the -U.S.-Mexican border near El…

Translanguaging offers a new perspective on language learning by affirming and leveraging the diverse language practices that make up learners' unitary language repertoire as resources for their learning. Despite the potential pedagogical benefits of translanguaging, English-only policies are still prevalent in many language classrooms. Even when…

In teaching newcomer students, educators must envision how to provide opportunities for language use and development through age-appropriate content instruction. This article describes a design research study, in which we developed and piloted 5th grade science units and studied the participation of two newcomer students in sense-making…

Teachers play a critical role in promoting dialogic interaction in their students. The purpose of this case study was to investigate how one very effective teacher taught two, cooperative, inquiry-based science units to her Year 6 class. In particular, the case study focused on how she used different discourses to capture students' curiosity in…

The population of emerging bilinguals (EBs) is rapidly growing across the United States leaving many teachers wondering how best to teach these students to read and write effectively in English. Concurrently, and as a result of the Common Core State Standards, elementary school students are required to produce more sophisticated writing than ever…

Social interdependence is a key concept in CSCL research. However, investigations of students' positive and negative interdependence during collaborative activities have often relied on self-report, rather than dialogue analysis. Bringing together politeness and social interdependence theory, we assessed "dialogue indicators" of positive…

In this study we investigated the effect of the request to reword the text of problematic word problems on the occurrence of realistic answers. We proposed the activity of rewording word problems to fifth grade pupils either working individually or in dyads. We found that the rewording the problems while working individually had no effect, while…

Instructional influences on productive use of academic vocabulary were investigated among 460 mostly African American and Latina/o fifth graders from 36 classrooms in eight public schools serving low-income families. Students received a 6-week unit on wolf management involving collaborative group work (CG) or direct instruction (DI). The big…

The linked concepts of "scaffolding" and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) were originally applied to the context of asymmetrical teaching and learning with a teacher or adult explicitly supporting a learner, usually a child, to achieve tasks beyond their ability when working alone. In this paper we investigate how these concepts…