This paper describes an upper level foreign language course designed to enable students to "learn about conversation" as both a universal and culture-specific form of talk, and to "learn to converse" at an advanced level and in culturally appropriate ways with speakers of French from France and Francophone countries. Students…

The purpose of this paper is to observe the approaches used by educators to facilitate learning about the Holocaust. The examples provided in this paper are one of various approaches that are used by educators teaching in the Federal Republic of Germany. Approaches will be different from country to country, from school to school, and from educator…

As classrooms become more diverse, one of the necessary goals of teacher education programs is to prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to work with children of diverse populations. PSTs who derive largely from a dominant White culture will clearly face this challenge. One effective approach used to assist PSTs to grasp the issues of cultural…

This mixed-method in vivo exploratory study examines the learning strategies that prepare students for social work practice and shows that these strategies can make a measurable difference. Though many authors have called for self-awareness to promote cultural sensitivity, the concept of the integrated personal/professional self has not previously…

Engaging in reflection is a vital part of learning for university students and its practice should be embedded in course design. Feedback on written work can be used as a vehicle for reflection. Both the gift and receipt of feedback and the habit of reflection require practice and capturing this experiential learning can be achieved in a class…

Effective self-reflection is a key component of excellent teaching. We describe the types of self-reflection identified in tutors' reflective statements following a peer observation of teaching exercise. We used an adapted version of the categories developed by Grushka, McLeod and Reynolds in 2005 to code text from 20 written statements as…

The purpose of the study was to examine how teachers enhance their knowledge of rational numbers focused on modeling problem tasks using multiple representations. The professional development summer institute and the follow-up Lesson Study (Lewis, 2002) throughout the academic year focused on engaging teachers in rational numbers and proportional…

This paper seeks to picture the politically and ideologically-oriented power relations and inequalities that link to their social, economic, and cultural relations in the education system of Turkey. An in-class project is conducted with students learning English in a preparatory class in a state university that concentrates on scrutinizing the…

This article describes how a study group for beginning teachers, led by instructors from the teacher education program from which they had just graduated, supported the novice teachers' abilities to survive their induction year and the constraints of school practices influenced by high-stakes accountability policies. Findings demonstrate that the…

In order to provide increasing support for students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms in high-stakes testing contexts, some schools have implemented co-teaching models. This qualitative case study explores how 1 special education teacher (Anna) and 1 general education history teacher (John) make sense of working together in an inclusive…

The purpose of this study was to determine how contributing to a class wiki affected the learning of pre-service teachers enrolled in a language arts methods class. Participants included 37 preservice teachers enrolled in three sections of a field-based language arts methods class during two semesters. Data collection included online observations…

This article argues that the social practice of learning (SPL), involving life-long learning, meta-learning, deep reflection, and dialogue in a community, should be the distinguishing knowledge base of schools in the twenty-first century. This article also analyses the strategies and challenges of the recent education reforms in Singapore through…

Working within the context of a school improvement project, a kindergarten moved from its use of a theme approach in the classroom to a project-based learning approach in which the children were asked to seek relevant information and materials based on their daily interests and exploration. The children were encouraged to integrate drawing and…

This article is to report an action research conducted in two sections of a course called Second Language Acquisition and Development during the fall semester of 2011 and the spring semester of 2012. By focusing on a three-way blended learning (BL) environment--face-to-face (F2F), eLearning, and Second Life (SL, a virtual-world environment), this…

There is wide agreement that problem-based learning is a key strategy to promote individual abilities for "learning how to learn". This paper presents the main contributions that reflective journals and the problem-based learning approach can make to foster professional knowledge and quality learning in higher education. Thirty-six…