This qualitative study investigates the changes and continuities in conceptions of teaching and learning from course commencement to course completion for a group of international preservice teachers undertaking a two-year Masters-level degree in Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Data were collected through a series of graphic elicitation…

Purpose: The author is interested in how international (migrant) pre-service teachers use their educational background knowledge and worldviews to make sense of the educational system, the pedagogy and of power relations between staff members in the hosting country. The author seeks to unveil their understanding of successful intellectual…

In this experiment, students in a large undergraduate biology course were first exposed to the concepts without new technical vocabulary ("jargon") in a pre-class reading assignment. Their learning of the concepts and jargon was compared with that of an equivalent group of students in another section of the same course, whose pre-class…

The purpose of this article is to outline the unique challenges faced by international students enrolled in business law or legal environment of business courses. It is also imperative to recognize the numerous opportunities that instructors can create in business law classrooms that will enhance the experience of all students given the…

Two hundred years ago, literacy meant being able to read and write. Today people find themselves with many literacies in a nation that is considered ninety-nine percent literate. The plethora of literacies has just given birth to another term--transliteracy. Transliteracy is the ability to read, listen to, view, understand, synthesize, and apply…

Teachers' knowing about students and their families is critical to ensuring relevant classroom instruction. The "Family Storytelling through Dichos" approach is explored as a culturally and linguistically appropriate mechanism for learning about students' backgrounds. This article posits that this approach may be a viable one, since it is rooted…

Our research project was guided by the assumption that students who learn to understand phenomena in everyday terms prior to being taught scientific language will develop improved understanding of new concepts. We used web-based software to teach students using a "content-first" approach that allowed students to transition from…

Presents reasons why jargon should not be used in biology instruction. Argues that more hands-on science activities and relating learning to everyday living needs to occur in the science classroom. (PR)

Scientific and technical jargon--specialized vocabulary, usually Latinate--plays a vital role in scientific and technical communication. But its proper use continues to be a point of discussion because of our concern with audience adaptation, rhetorical exigence, rhetorical purpose, and ethics. We've focused on teaching students--and on convincing…