Effective learning-teaching process is ensured when students interact and actively participate in the learning process. Though most instructors stressed the value of active participation in classrooms of universities and colleges, achieving success in eliciting it appears more difficult. There is high tendency of instructors in higher institutions…

In addressing vocabulary explanations in language classroom settings, a growing number of studies have examined the different ways teachers respond to the vocabulary explanation requests made by students in second language (L2) classrooms. Relatively lacking is an investigation into the nature of vocabulary explanation requests made by students in…

Informal formative assessments (IFAs) are classroom interactions teachers use to gather information about their students' learning, interpret it, and act on this information to achieve academic goals. One of the responses science teachers can enact as the result of IFA is constructing explanations to clarify science concepts to their students.…

This paper provides a description and rationale for a performance assessment of a teaching practice--leading a classroom discussion (LCD)--included in the ETS® National Observational Teaching Examination (NOTE) assessment series. In this assessment, candidates interact with a small class of virtual students represented by avatars in a…

This report describes and provides research and scholarly support for a core practice of teaching--eliciting student thinking (EST)--that is the target for a performance assessment contributing one component of the "ETS"® National Observational Teaching Examination (NOTE) assessment series. The purpose of this report is to review the…

This report reviews the scholarly and research evidence supporting the construct labeled modeling and explaining content (MEC), which is measured via a performance assessment in the "ETS"® National Observational Teaching Examination (NOTE) assessment series. This construct involves practices at the heart of teaching that deal with how…

This article explores the ways in which what counts as "legitimate" knowledge is produced and negotiated in two multilingual classrooms of two different programmes designed to "attend to diversity" at secondary schools in the Madrid region. Following a sociolinguistic approach, the article focuses on the ways in which local…

This study focused on a specific feature of preschool teacher talk, revoicing (a situation in which the teacher repeats, fully or partially, what the child said in the immediately preceding turn), within a specific interactional context, circle time, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the type of language mediation that occurs in this…

Through the use of a case study, this article explores the role of talk in underprepared students' acquisition of academic discourse. Conversation analysis as a linguistic framework is used to examine the interactions of students participating in a small writing group. Tracing the progress of one student's paper, I explore how students'…

Modeling is a core practice in science and a central part of scientific literacy. We present theoretical and empirical motivation for a learning progression for scientific modeling that aims to make the practice accessible and meaningful for learners. We define scientific modeling as including the elements of the practice (constructing, using,…