Literacy skills are essential if students are to access knowledge and achieve academic success in middle school science. A key difficulty with interpreting literacy practices in any discipline is the problem of conceptualising what constitutes literacy. Our study contributes new understandings to the discipline of science where there are ongoing…

The aim of this article is to foster dialogue between proponents of Alexander's notion of dialogic teaching and those working with educational linguistics--in particular those working with systemic functional theory. To this end, the article begins by highlighting important points of alignment between dialogic teaching and systemic theory: their…

This article reports on an ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) doctoral study which investigated how teachers consulted pupils about teaching and learning in classrooms. Interest in consulting pupils has increased over the last decade; existing research suggests pupils have valuable perspectives on teaching and learning which teachers can…

This paper investigates the respective roles of substantive and procedural understanding with regard to students' ability to carry out an open-ended science investigation. The research is a case study centred on an intervention in which undergraduate initial teacher training students are taught the basic building blocks of procedural…

In recent years much emphasis has been placed, both by researchers and by policy-makers, on the role that subject knowledge plays in the classroom practice of primary teachers. Within UK research on primary science education, this emphasis is often linked with constructivist ideas about effective teaching. In this article, I explore the…

Using an ethnographic-interpretive research strategy, a study of teacher-student interaction displayed in a secondary physics class suggests student-centered instructional strategies create an environment that enhances self-esteem, responsibility, behavior and academic performance. Examples of study guides, activity sheets and topic overviews are…