The theoretical framework of communities of practice (CoP) is often used for framing research into online communities. However, there is an absence of measures and empirical work that evaluates knowledge-sharing within such communities. This represents a substantial gap in our understanding of informal learning for diverse people and in the case…

Civic writing has appeared on walls over centuries, across cultures, and in response to political concerns. This article advances a civic interrogation of how civic writing is publicly authored, read, and discussed as openly accessible and multimodal texts on digital walls. Drawing upon critical literacy perspectives, we examine how a repertoire…

This article introduces an empirical study of "Connected Learning" in a Japanese EFL classroom context, instantiated through the Bridging Activities pedagogical framework. Students considered their interests, made groups, and joined Reddit communities. Self-selected texts were then analyzed with rigorous teacher mediation. Students…

Framed from positioning theory and dynamic systems theory, the paper reports on a naturalistic study involving four Chinese participants and their American peers in an intercultural asynchronous computer-mediated communication (ACMC) activity. Based on the moment-by-moment analysis and triangulation of forum posts, reflective essays, and…

This article reports a holistic approach to assessing online discussions. This holistic approach integrates three assessment methods: assessment of learning, assessment for learning, and assessment as learning. Assessment of learning directly examines students' learning products to decide whether they have achieved the expected learning through…

This article examines the potential for creating an alternative learning context using digital tools in English classrooms to better support the identities and language practices of diverse learners. We explore the role language plays in the relationships between preservice teachers in central Illinois and their 10th-grade partners in Los Angeles.…

Set within the context of a global pursuit towards the internationalisation of higher education, this paper critically examines student discourse in a globally connected classroom between learners in the USA and Singapore. It makes salient some of the cultural assumptions and tensions that undergird students' discourse in collaborative…

This article examines online discussions during a teacher education class for experienced teachers seeking licensure in teaching English learners. It seeks to understand experienced teachers' constructions of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. Using discourse analysis to emphasize talk as situated and action-oriented, the…

Approaching the new media literacies as social practices through the lens of Participatory Culture Framework, the present study adapted new media literacies to online social networks and examined the social media literacy practices of international graduate students (IGSs). The data was collected through an online survey of 90 IGSs,…

How professional development is delivered in today's networked world has shifted greatly, and research into online spaces of learning is growing. Numerous questions, however, remain regarding how online spaces can be leveraged to foster meaningful conversations that address current critical educational issues. This qualitative study examines the…

This study is about graduate students' discourse practices in classroom text-based synchronous computer mediated discussions (SCMD). Cultural historical activity theory (in short, Activity Theory) is the primary theoretical lens through which the data are analyzed. Engeström's (1987) Activity System model among the various theoretical positions or…

This research explores the ability of grade 2 students to engage in productive discussion about the state of their knowledge building using group-level feedback tools to support their metadiscourse. Two aspects of knowledge work were common to the comparison and experimental classes: "Knowledge Building talk" (KB talk) involving…

The aim of the current study is to investigate the impact of counselling-based training on online peer support by comparing the interventions of trained peer supporters as opposed to non-trained peer supporters. Two independent raters analysed 746 support posts published during a period of one year at the "Student to Student" online peer…

This study, conducted over a one-year period, examined the collaboration practices in a large-scale school-university capacity-building collaborative action research project that was designed to help English language teachers develop the skills needed to deal with the reforms to assessment practices in Hong Kong's school curriculum. The study…

As a social sharing network whose number of users worldwide continues to rapidly increase, Twitter has become an active network for individuals to share their thoughts and feelings at any given time. The purpose of this work, then, is to evaluate Twitter users of Turkey in terms of how they write about their teachers on Twitter. In order to…