Teaching and learning research typically focuses on learning outcomes relating to the acquisition of knowledge. In this article, we shift focus to a different outcome: student commitment to, and thus successful completion of, a course. By examining the relationship between instructor pedagogical choices and rates of student retention--as measured…

Student engagement continues to be one of the biggest challenges facing academia today. Educators often possess the knowledge needed to teach a class but lack the technique or approach with which to make the content engaging. In addition, students face myriad distractions as part of their everyday lives, complicating our ability to better connect…

Much work on classroom interaction has been devoted to the IRF or IRE structure as well as pair or group work. Relatively little is known about less "legitimate" moments such as humor or off-task talk, and existing studies on playful interaction have been limited to EFL or foreign language classrooms. Based on 16 hours of videotaped interactions…

This article demonstrates, using conversation analysis, how students use address terms when reproaching the teacher. The data consist of videotaped lessons of Finnish as a second language in secondary school. The analyses show, first of all, that teacher-oriented address terms can be used separately as reproaches, in which case they are marked…

Teaching is emotional work. This is especially the case in the first years of teaching when new teachers are particularly vulnerable. By understanding changes in teacher emotions in the early years of teaching, we hope to identify strategies that might ultimately reduce teacher attrition. As part of a larger study of the transition of new teachers…