Dr. McGinnis-Smith earned a PhD in special education with emphasis in EBD at the University of Iowa and an administrator certification from Drake University. She is coauthor of the social skills teaching series "Skillstreaming." She also coauthored with Richard Simpson "Skillstreaming Children and Youth with High Functioning Autism…

Many educators in adult, community and higher education contexts are concerned with fostering reflective learning amongst their students. This paper explores the concept of critical reflection and considers how engaging with fiction may be an innovative pedagogical approach to support critical learning opportunities. Drawing upon interviews with…

This paper explores the effects participation as writers has on the identities teachers take on when they are both writers who teach and teachers who write. This paper focuses on three interview participants and explores their encounters as writers as they engaged in the "risky" business of being writers, within and beyond school. A…

In this interview, Eric Jensen, an internationally recognized speaker and writer on student poverty and brain-based learning, discusses how the educational mindsets and practical strategies from his latest two books, "Poor Students, Rich Teaching: Mindsets for Change" (2016) and "Poor Students, Richer Teaching: Mindsets for…

Adult men create zines (self-publications written as alternative to commercial magazines) that advance content learning and knowledge. We describe three of these zine writers who created five zines on topics related to the disciplines of science, social studies, and English/language arts. We collected their zines, interviewed the authors, and…

Wikis (websites that can be edited quickly by multiple authors) were used with upper-primary school children to write group reports on a science topic. Two teachers observed the children working, and their observations were used alongside the texts from the wikis and group interviews with children to explore the question of whether using wikis…

Israeli-Palestinian peace is promoted through political and diplomatic channels, as well as indirect channels such as conferences, lectures, meetings, workshops and political journalism. However, there is less awareness of the extensive artistic activity in Israel surrounding peace and its implications for society, or of the uniqueness of the…

Questioning the traditional reading instruction that overly emphasizes literal comprehension of texts, one of the authors conducted action research and revised her advanced-level Japanese reading course at a university by incorporating some principles from critical literacy. The "critical reading" course aimed at developing students' ability to…

Keeping literature classrooms vibrant, energized, and current can require supreme pedagogical effort, especially in light of students' sometimes pointed disinterest in traditional and/or canonical texts. Integrating local authors into a standard curriculum can be an effective strategy for invigorating students' interest in literature and helping…

This dissertation investigates the practice of blogging by multilingual graduate students in a TESOL program in an American context. The focus of the study is to understand the relationship between the practice of blog writing and the sense of authorship of the participants. The sense of authorship in this study mainly refers to how students see…

Transcript of a conference call, as an example of a way to obtain classroom contact with contemporary authors. (AA)

Among topics discussed during this interview with Martin Gardner are: The origin and future of "Mathematical Games," pseudoscience, mathematicians and the public, and teaching. (PK)

Describes a dramatic way to record the words and expressions of living, but largely unresearched, journalists. (KS)

The purpose of writing is to communicate with an audience. Teachers need to move heaven and earth to be sure that every child knows what it is to become a published author. Criteria for selecting a piece is important. In this article, the author explores why the criteria that children use for selecting poetry to share with an audience differ from…

A satisfying assignment for college freshman composition classes is to send students out to interview working writers in the college community. (HOD)