As K-12 educators work toward targeted, small group instruction together with college and career readiness skills, many implement collaborative learning experiences within their classrooms. Collaborative learning can help students develop deeper understandings of content while building critical life-long skills, and using a design for learning…

Artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance teachers' capabilities by sharing control over different parts of learning activities. This is especially true for complex learning activities, such as dynamic learning transitions where students move between individual and collaborative learning in un-planned ways, as the need arises. Yet, few initiatives…

As educators, our goal is to help our students be successful, but in order to accomplish this, we need to understand what factors contribute to student success. One factor, small-group active learning, has been correlated to improved academic outcomes; however, the magnitude of this improvement can vary across different courses, different types of…

Integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is becoming increasingly common in K-12 classrooms, and small group activities are ubiquitous to STEM instruction. This article includes both theoretical and practical descriptions of a microethnographic approach to critical multimodal discourse analysis that we used to…

The purpose of this study was to examine how small groups of students in an introductory undergraduate chemistry course construct CERs and the influence of race, gender, and perceived status during this construction. The small groups of students engaged in three chemistry activities that required them to generate a claim, evidence, and reasoning…

The paper deals with the technology of using a flipped classroom model in teaching linguistic disciplines to students majoring in a foreign language. The suggested idea of 'flipped classroom' is based on the use of Moodle learning platform which is designed to provide educators and learners with a secure and integrated system to create…

Children have a natural proclivity to teach, help, cooperate, and empathize with others, and these interactions can have positive benefits for children's emotional, social, and cognitive development. This article is about ways music teachers can design peer-assisted music learning activities that will benefit everyone in the class and ultimately…

This paper discusses the fundamental issue of why small group activities are utilized in the language learning classroom. Although these activities have gained popularity in the field of Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), supported by a sound theoretical base, few studies have so far examined the reasons why language teachers are…

A pedagogical innovation was collaboratively designed, implemented and evaluated in the context of a school-university partnership. The innovation had a dual purpose: 1) to provide an opportunity for primary pre-service teachers to develop their understanding and experience of teaching "design and produce" processes (working…

It is envisaged that small-group exercises as part of a large-group session would facilitate not only group work exercises (a valuable employability skill), but also peer learning. In this article, such a strategy to facilitate the active engagement of the student in a large-group setting was explored. The production of student-led resources was…

This study examines how the use of a science inquiry activity in an environmental socio-scientific issue (SSI) impacts pre-service teachers' argumentative practice in two ways: social negotiation and epistemic understanding of arguments. Twenty pre-service science teachers participated in this study as a part of their science methods class. Small…

A growing body of research, both nationally and internationally, indicates that children in the early childhood years (birth to age 8) learn primarily through their senses and from direct experience. They develop an understanding about the world through play, exploration, and creative activities as well as by watching and imitating adults and…

Science education research has recommended cooperative inquiry based science in the primary science context for more than two decades but after more than 20 years, student achievement in science has not substantially improved. This study, through direct observation and analysis, investigated content-related student interactions in an authentic…

The authors describe several types of classroom assessment techniques (CATs) and cognitive scaffolding procedures that they have developed over the years. They then bring the procedures together in a sample lecture/group learning class presentation.

Government budget constraints had forced the Emergency Dispatch Center (EDC) at a military installation to work with less than the normal number of staff. A Program Proposal was developed previously that had determined that a learning gap existed in the researcher's work environment at a military installation. To counter this gap, Learning Tasks…