Research has shown that collaborative learning is a very powerful methodology as it ensures interaction among students, humanises the learning process and has positive effects on academic achievement. An activity based on this approach can also benefit from the use of technology, making this task more appealing to our students today. The aim of…

Districts are increasingly making personnel decisions based on teachers' impact on student-achievement gains and classroom observations. In some schools, however, a teacher's practices and their students' achievement may reflect not just individual but collaborative efforts. In other settings, teachers' instruction benefits less from the insights…

There is considerable agreement about the fact that the presence of researchers in the classroom mediates teaching and learning. Why "should" two very different forms of human activity, one designed to study the other, interact and mediate each other? In this article, we propose cultural-historical activity theory as a framework for understanding…

This report describes a study of a procedure for recording teacher interactions in a sixth grade classroom. The study was designed to record interactions for an entire class and to determine if a sixth grade student could act as a reliable observer in such a data collecting system. Results indicate that sixth grade students can observe and record…

THIS SHORT-TERM EVALUATION OF THE MORE EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS (MES) PROGRAM IN 21 NEW YORK CITY PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS ASSESSED THE MES INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAM AND ITS IMPACT ON THE STUDENTS. DATA WERE GATHERED FROM (1) OBSERVATIONAL VISITS TO CLASSROOMS BY TWO-MEMBER TEAMS OF EDUCATORS AND SOCIAL SCIENTISTS, (2) STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS WITH…

Materials used in conducting a conference workshop on language immersion are presented, including an introductory overview, a guide for observing and analyzing immersion instruction, findings resulting from analysis of the program in question, and the text of a related presentation made at the same conference. The introductory section describes…