Bakhtin defines chronotope in his literary dialogic theory as the unity of time and space where events occur. Here, in this conceptual paper, I expand and apply this notion to education, discuss, and illustrate the three major espoused educational chronotopes that I abstracted in my analysis of educational practices around Dialogic Pedagogy. Frist…

Personal learning environments (PLEs) and critical information literacies (CILs) are two concepts that have been presented as responses to the challenges of the rich and complex information landscape. While both approaches support learners' critical engagement with new information environments, each was developed within a different field. This…

Current educational policy in Mexico, as in many other parts of the world, leans heavily on teachers to use computers in their classrooms. This article explores under what conditions teachers are willing to learn about and use digital technology in their work. The authors' central premise is that incorporating technology into teaching is a complex…

An effective learning environment interface (LEI) is a means to enable students to focus on learning and to understand content, while establishing connections and relationships among course activities. Using this fundamental premise, we propose a flexible, user-centered, and seamless LEI which is intended to remediate the fragmented interface…

Faculty in higher education may find themselves reading student work or hearing students' voices in class or in online course discussion boards that reveal a lot of personal information, information that they think might be better kept private, information that may be concerning or even threatening. In their attempts to create richer learning…

Within a social view of literacy, this paper reports a two-year ethnographic case study of an adolescent multilingual writer, with respect to her transitions across in-school (i.e., Creative Writing class) and out-of-school writing contexts. This study was aimed to address two specific gaps in the fields of second language (L2) writing and…

According to neutralization theory, to justify unethical behavior delinquents often embrace strategies that deflect personal responsibility for their actions from them and toward other persons or contextual factors outside their control. Drawing on neutralization theory, this case study explores how middle school students endorsed comparable…

Preservice teacher-candidates enrolled in teacher education programs across Canada are exposed to the nuances of school organization during their practice-teaching assignments. Although the literature is full of scholarship about the concerns of new teachers, less attention has been given to school organizational factors as sources of dissonance…

"Melioration" is borrowing and using an idea from another field not closely associated with your field of expertise. Using the borrowed concept to address a challenge in your field potentially provides new avenues of action and insight. I borrow the concept of boundary objects from science fields and use it to examine assignments in the college…

This article explores the effectiveness of writing to help nurse-learners develop critical thinking in an asynchronous, online learning environment. The formal written assignments of students in an online nursing health assessment program were analyzed for evidence of critical thinking according to Johns' Model of Structured Reflection (Johns,…

Provides a qualitative content analysis of photographs of the hallway displays in three elementary schools. Notes that the forms and functions of things displayed on hallway walls reveal much about school culture, what is valued, and what educational tools are and are not being used. Suggests how educators can use hallway display areas to support…

We assess students' appreciation and use of various tools designed to extend effective learning beyond the classroom. For a given tool, results vary depending upon the overall pedagogical approach of the course.

A research is conducted which lays emphasis on how teachers can use bilingual student's writing as a springboard for deeper exploration into societal inequities in particular by paying attention to both the ideas and the voices revealed in their written words. The goal is to create an empowering learning environment in which students are able to…

This article examines the potential of personal storytelling as a pedagogical method. When incorporated into the educational experience, autobiographical stories serve as a primary and fruitful link between lived experience and curricular content, a connection integral to adult learning. These stories enable learners to identify congruencies and…

Children in today's society must function in many environments. The home, family, school, neighborhood, peers, and society generally shape our children for the future. Teachers, partners of this cyclical challenge, have to be prepared to help students meet the challenges of the world 2000. Teachers can learn to meet this goal by creating learning…