Reflection is a key component for integrating meaningful collegiate service-learning experiences with a student's personal and professional growth. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to compare two types of reflective journal writing (guided and open-ended) utilized in undergraduate Communication Disorder courses. A comparison of pre- and…

Reflective learning entails a thoughtful learning process through which one not only learns a particular piece of knowledge or skill, but better understands "how" one learned it--knowledge that can then be transferred well beyond the scope of the specific learning experience. This type of thinking empowers learners by making them more…

This article features student perspectives on the role of personal writing in English class. Key findings and quotations are shared from two in-depth interviews with students who wrote exceptional personal essays as part of a narrative nonfiction unit in a 10th grade English class. Participants reported that writing personally generated more…

The purpose of the study was to investigate how structured blogging influences pre-service teachers' writings. In this study, pre-service teachers were provided with structured guidance for blog writing to support their instructional media development, undertaken as part of their teacher education course. Content analysis was conducted to examine…

For students new to higher education, the task of developing their academic writing skills, and particularly the principles and practices of source-referencing, can be daunting. Although institutions and teachers can and do provide positive guidance on this score, all too often students veer into inadvertent plagiarism through lack of confidence…

This study discusses a method to promote raising critical consciousness in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom via creative writing activities by having students write journals and/or personal letters from the perspective of individuals from outside groups that have been marginalized or vilified in the students' dominant culture.…

The purpose of the study is to determine the effects of using writing activities with different learning purposes by the secondary school 7th grade students on their academic achievement and attitudes towards the course. The study was carried out in a secondary school located in the centre of Erzurum in 2012-2013 academic year; the study is a…

This study investigated the lived experiences of first-year college students who kept personal and private journals in an English composition course. The purpose of this study was to provide a description of the lived experiences of keeping those journals from the point-of-view of the journal writers themselves. Forty-eight students were involved…

Wikis, when used as an open editing tool, can have profound and subtle effects on students' collaborative learning process. Hailed as a collaborative learning and writing tool, many questions remain regarding the pedagogical impacts of using wikis in the classroom. Do students feel comfortable editing each others' wiki articles? Do students learn…

Suggests topics and assignments to elicit real, authentic, and expressive student writing. Such "real writing" tasks ask students to look inside themselves and to write genuine responses and about actual feelings and beliefs. (TM)

Study analyzed the writing assignments of two secondary preservice teachers involved in a university teacher education practicum designed to promote reflective thinking. Found that written assignments were more useful in making participants' cognitive processes explicit than in their actively constructing knowledge about teaching and learning.…

This paper demonstrates with specific examples from various students' journals how subtly and, at the same time, pervasively ethnocentricity expresses itself, and offers suggestions on how to assess and combat ethnocentric beliefs through writing assignments and classroom exercises in an international business law course at Indiana University. The…

Proposes methods of applying new social studies teaching techniques. Suggests making the social studies classroom more social through group discussion, research, and writing. Recommends using textbook journals to help students learn to think, read, and write more critically. Calls for the use of interpersonal and textual metadiscourse. (SG)

The book describes one teacher's study of student journal writing in college-level English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction and explores the potential of student journals in second language teaching. It first introduces the research questions and methods guiding the study, then reviews the literature that informed the investigation of mental…

This book is a collection of essays by full-time classroom teachers who describe their efforts to implement the vision of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards documents and to empower their students in mathematics. Chapter 1, "Students' Conceptions of Mathematics and the Challenge of the Standards" (Dorothy Buerk),…