Although most people acknowledge the importance of interactions in class, it is commonly seen some students still rarely actively participate in face-to-face interactions, especially those from a Confucian cultural background. Previous research focused on many factors to understand this phenomenon, yet social anxiousness has not been given enough…

Researchers and teachers often invoke context to explain their particular research/teaching issues. However, definitions of context vary widely and the direct impact of the context is often unexplained. Based on research showing contextual differences in second language (L2) learner beliefs and interactional behaviors, the current project compared…

In recent years there has been an increased focus on the need for teachers to develop learning communities where all students have opportunities to engage in interactive discourse. However, there are few studies that focus on student perceptions and accounts of mathematical reasoning in classrooms with interactive mathematical talk as a focus of…

Notwithstanding the wealth of research that documents the effectiveness of self-management programs in the classroom, few investigations have explored classwide use of self-management procedures as a universal intervention. To extend existing research in this area, we examined the effectiveness of a classwide self-management intervention for…

Identifying which online behaviours and interactions are associated with student perceptions of being supported will enable a deeper understanding of how those activities contribute to learning experiences. Student language is one aspect of their interaction in need of greater exploration within discourse-based online learning environments. As a…

The majority of research on faculty-student interaction has been primarily quantitative to date and has focused primarily on determining what kinds of interactions students have with faculty. This study furthers the literature on faculty-student interaction, taking a qualitative approach to examine what types of interactions with faculty students…

The current study is one of the first to investigate children's perceptions of quality in teacher-child relationships using a narrative measure. It is also one of the first studies to investigate how the child's report is associated with the teacher's report and with an observer's report of quality in teacher-child interactions. Participants…

The dynamics of the student-student relationship within the asynchronous online classroom, as evidenced by conversations in an online discussion board, is a balancing act potentially more complex than those occurring in real-time. In order for learning to truly be considered effective, a collaborative, safe environment needs to exist among…

This study aimed to investigate the perceptions, interactions and behaviours of different-ability college students when they worked on different types of assessments. Two classes of 145 Vietnamese college students participated in this three-month study. The students were assigned to mixed-ability groups, each of which consisted of five students.…

This dissertation explores how participants express and interpret verbal cues of interaction involvement in dyadic conversations via text-based Instant Messaging (IM). Moreover, it seeks to discover differences in the way American participants and Chinese participants use verbal cues when they are highly, or lowly involved. Based on previous…

Initially, the author began her teacher inquiry project by focusing on the superhero play she had been observing in her classroom and on her concerns about how it might be impacting the classroom community. Through an ongoing process of self-reflection and reading research, she was able to open herself up to interacting and engaging with the…

Students who are expelled from school often demonstrate the need for alternative learning environments that respond to their academic disengagement as well as their behavioral challenges. Teachers in such environments contend with a variety of student needs while attempting to engage students in the learning process. This grounded theory study…

A risk associated with the use of games in training and education is that players "game the game," instead of focusing on their learning goals. The term "gamer mode" is proposed to describe this attitude. A player with a gamer-mode attitude strives to achieve goals that are optimal for winning the game, but suboptimal with…

It is acknowledged that perceptions of self and others play a fundamental role in the effectiveness of social interactions (Rose-Krasnor, 1997). This is particularly true in elementary schools where teachers interact six hours a day with students. What accounts for poor teacher-student relationships and the breakdown of teaching and learning is a…

Second grade classroom protocols collected within this volume are examples of the protocols developed by the ethnographers associated with Special Study A: "An Ethnographic Study of the Forty Classrooms of the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study." Twenty teachers at both the second and fifth grades were observed for one week by an…