Online learning has been growing steadily as an essential instructional mode in most higher education settings. In response to its popularity, many studies have been conducted to provide a better understanding of how learning occurs in this environment. Various frameworks and theories have been adopted to examine learning in this environment.…

Student engagement is highly visible in higher education research about learning and teaching, but lacks a single meaning. It can be conceived narrowly as a set of student and institutional behaviours in a classroom or holistically and critically as a social-cultural ecosystem in which engagement is the glue linking classroom, personal background…

Given the exponential growth in international student populations in the United States, supporting cross-cultural language learners (CCLL) in developing their self and co-regulated learning is highly important. This paper presents a conceptual framework on the value of feedback within self-regulated versus co-regulated environments, in the context…

This article focuses on the ways of researching the process of designing, developing, and using telecollaboration (also known as online intercultural exchange) to facilitate the learning of both linguistic and "intercultural communicative competence" (ICC) in higher education courses in different educational contexts in the United…

This study explores the factors that cause international graduate students to struggle and these students' ways of dealing with such problems in light of sociocultural theory, which views learning as a social and cultural act. The findings show that graduate classes function as communities of practices in which classmates and professors mutually…

While powerful gender inequalities remain in American society, women have made substantial gains and now largely surpass men in one crucial arena: education. Women now outperform men academically at all levels of school, and are more likely to obtain college degrees and enroll in graduate school. What accounts for this enormous reversal in the…

In this article, we frame "productive learning" in a sociocultural perspective to show how it ties into a cluster of concepts on activity and transformation and illuminates the relation between learning processes and learning products. Based on two case studies, we argue that understanding learning as action entails developing the students'…

The cultural validity of a psychological or educational theory is a function of its sensitizing and heuristic power for a given task addressed by a given community. African universities have inherited from the West a number of institutionalized arrangements for learning that tend to decontextualize the learning process by extracting learners from…

These analyses form part of a three-year project looking at mathematical thinking as a socially organized activity. We revisit data from a University Calculus class using tools from two theoretical perspectives, used increasingly in mathematics education research: (1) semiotic mediation; and (2) discursive practices. We highlight how different…

The first of two assumptions underlying the thesis of this paper is that, in the face of escalating costs, uneven demographics, faltering revenues, and a serious erosion of public confidence, United States higher education must become more productive. Universities and colleges of all types must produce demonstrably more education, research, and…

An anthropological perspective on the educative process is presented in the four parts of this book. Part 1, "An Anthropological Overview," suggests some of the many viewpoints from which anthropology says something about education. For instance, methodologically, anthropologists look at the whole context of a learning situation rather…

An intensive case study in learning a second foreign language, which is part of an applied linguistics course for teachers/teacher trainees offered at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) is described. Attention is directed to: case study rationale and objectives; student orientation and preparation; and areas of focus and the…

A study investigated Koreans' use and misuse of the English passive, from a pragmatic perspective, with attention to the possible source of errors. Subjects were 200 college students at two universities in Korea who were English majors or minors or taking English as an elective course, divided equally between sophomores and juniors. The subjects…

A study examined the factors shaping English language education within the Japanese public education system and the attitudes of Japanese learners toward the pronunciation of English, first in an overview and then within the context of a case study of an adult Japanese student. The first section discusses the status and instruction of English in…

This thesis clarifies the role of the applied linguist in the language and language teaching sciences with particular application to advanced language learning that takes place after five years of study. Students' deficiencies identified at matriculation together with the psychological and practical needs of the students and their society identify…