This study is a case study within a three-year-long design research study. The purposes of this study are twofold. The first purpose includes investigating whether there is a significant difference in seventh-grade students' proportional reasoning skills before and after a teaching experiment conducted in line with the perspectives of Hypothetical…

When a Year 7 student physically reacted to a prompt of another student by anxiously drumming the desk with his ruler, exclaiming "uuuuhh", the initial thought of the observing researcher, Laura, was: "this is an interesting account". This started a reflective journey of first applying robust research methodologies to the…

Based on control-value theory (CVT), we examined longitudinal relations between students' control and value appraisals, three activity-related achievement emotions (enjoyment, anger, and boredom), and math achievement (N = 1,716 fifth and seventh grade students). We assessed appraisals and emotions with self-report measures of perceived competence…

This study presents a new theoretical and pedagogical framework based on the theories of Critical Religious Education (CRE), Variation Theory (VT) and the Learning Study model with the purpose of improving teaching and learning in Islamic Religious Education (IRE). It reports a Learning Study conducted in a secondary girls Muslim school in London…

The dialogic model of learning immersed in education arises from the first interaction pattern. However, although Paulo Freire, in his theory, had indeed been including several theorists who supported the interest of the social and cultural part immersed in the meaning of learning, it was only until a few years ago when education began a turn of…

The Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), in the state of North Carolina, has gone through considerable recent effort to revise, support, and assess their seventh-grade social studies curriculum in an effort to serve three goals: comply with the Common Core State Standards (Common Core), comply with the North Carolina Essential Standards…

Research in learning technologies has often focused on the affordances of single technologies such as pcs, smartphones or interactive whiteboards. However, in most learning environments technologies do not stand alone but are embedded in activity structures and webs of materials that make up the learning activity. This is specifically relevant…

This study describes the process of creating an Invitational Learning environment to improve the writing competence of middle school students in two special education classes. Teacher-student interactions were coded according to Purkey and Novak's (1996) Intentionality/Invitation Quadrant with levels corresponding to intentionally disinviting,…

Supporting a productive discourse is an important element of reform teaching, as it gives students opportunities to understand mathematical reasoning. In this study, the practices of an expert seventh-grade mathematics teacher are described to illustrate how she created and sustained a genuine mathematical discourse environment during the teaching…

The paper examined expert literature teachers' coping with a novel textbook, integrating literature with visual arts, which is a particular interdisciplinary case of text-image relations in textbooks. Examination was performed within the framework of teachers' responses to curricular changes and of theory regarding strategies of interdisciplinary…

By examining how people learn, the educational theories of Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner can be synthesized to give this set of core Constructivist principles. Principles of effective mathematics teaching: (1) allows learning that is "active" and "reflective". Students are required to transfer key concepts to new situations; (2) allows…

This paper addresses elements of the bilingual program for English language learners (ELL) in Illinois School District U-46 (U-46). Beginning with the context of bilingual education in the United States, the paper also introduces the current state of bilingual programming in U-46. ELL initiatives in light of the U-46 partnership with the Stupski…

Longitudinal data (five waves) from large cohorts of 7th grade students in East Germany ("n"=2,119) and West Germany ("n"=1,928) were collected from the start of the reunification of the school systems following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Here we integrate the two major theoretical models of relations between academic…