Students' critical thinking is often researched using quantitative tests designed to measure critical thinking. In contrast, this study qualitatively analyses group and whole-class dialogues in an interdisciplinary SSI project by focusing on students' critical thinking practices. As such, the study provides an in-depth example of an immersion…

Background: Teaching is more complex than dealing with the cognitive aspects of learning alone and is also influenced by affective states. Because of this, more research is needed into the role of teachers' emotions in classroom interaction. Of special importance is research into reflective thinking and the extent to which it may be disturbed by…

Integrity in student-teacher interaction is more likely when students and teachers tactfully disrupt the pacing of efficient, but fragmented lessons. Yet, teachers sometimes cling to fragmented, oversimplified definitions of knowledge, and defensively manage classroom behavior by controlling students' access to information. Ironically, adolescents…

Teaching that is responsive to students' ideas can create opportunities for rigorous sense-making talk by young learners. Yet we have few accounts of how thoughtful attempts at responsive teaching unfold across units of instruction in elementary science classrooms and have only begun to understand how responsiveness encourages rigor in…

For students to learn optimally, teachers must design classrooms that are responsive to the full range of student development. The teacher must be adaptive, but so must each student and the learning culture itself. In other words, adaptive teaching means constructing a responsive learning culture that accommodates and even capitalizes on diversity…

In this paper we consider how mathematics instruction that values, attends to, and builds on students' mathematical ideas is realized through discourse. We describe interactions that build on students' thinking and in which students help to determine the direction of mathematics lessons as responsive. Using a framework we developed to characterize…

This paper presents an analysis of teachers' questions and students' responses in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) classes of history. Through the combined application of genre theory and a typology of CLIL teacher academic questions, the study aims at contributing to the understanding of how CLIL students use the foreign language…

A teacher's communication choices can spark student understanding. By harnessing and modeling the power that qualitative language provides when characterizing artworks, these choices support a student's evolving capabilities from simple description to a deeper embodiment of art criticism. This article is aimed at helping teachers understand how…

Previous research on the effectiveness of clickers has found their use to be positively associated with exam scores but not without methodological issues that hinder the conclusions that can be drawn. To address these limitations, the current studies isolated the effects of clickers from the effects of questions presented with clickers. Study 1…

Many educators understand how to gauge learning by paying close attention to student talk. Few know how to interpret and attend to student silence as a form of participation. In her new book, Katherine Schultz examines the complex role student silence can play in teaching and learning. Urging teachers to listen to student silence in new ways, this…

The purpose of this study was to determine students' communication in the college classroom through faculty-led methods of enhancing classroom participation. The students in this study perceived that faculty members work to engage them in various classroom activities and enhance their participation through discussions, debates, dialogue, group…

This study replicated and extended Wanzer, Frymier, Wojtaszczyk, and Smith's (2006) preliminary typology of appropriate and inappropriate teacher humor and advanced three explanations for differences in interpretations of teacher humor. Students were more likely to view teacher humor as inappropriate when it was perceived as offensive and when it…

The article discusses various techniques which teachers can use to foster student assertiveness. (NQ)

Suggests alternatives to questioning after reading that involve students and encourage independence. (AEA)

Study found differential effects for five types of teacher directions (verbal instruction, nonverbal instruction, verbal instruction with physical assistance, nonverbal instruction with physical assistance, and physical assistance) with 24 severely behaviorally disordered students, aged 9-16. Nonverbal commands resulted in the most appropriate…