Materials development is increasingly recognized as a valuable venue for narrowing the research-practice gap. This qualitative case study explores how four middle school teachers and three university researchers collaborated in a community of practice (CoP) to write textbooks by highlighting the interplay between their collaborative relationships…

In addressing the widening research-practice gap in the field of second language (L2) education, an increasing emphasis has been placed on a bidirectional and mutually beneficial relationship between L2 researchers and practitioners. Through the lens of an ecosystems model, this qualitative study explored how seven researchers at a research center…

The need for collaboration between researchers and practitioners to address the research-practice gap is a long-debated topic in applied linguistics. Little is known, however, about how researchers and practitioners can collaboratively develop teaching materials, as a potential venue to narrow the gap. This study explored how two groups of…

Background/Context: Despite advances in the learning sciences, a persistent gap remains between research and practice. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: In this project, we develop and try out a new approach to education research and development in which researchers, designers/developers, and instructors collaborate to…

This study investigates email pragmatic instruction in four sets of international English textbooks. The prevalence of email communication in today's technology-mediated world necessitates its inclusion in second language classroom instruction. However, our analysis of the books reveals inadequate attention to the sociocultural aspects of email…

Recent literature on the use of exemplars in the context of higher education has shown that exemplar-based instruction is implemented in various disciplines; nevertheless, how exemplar-based instruction can be implemented in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing classrooms in higher education institutions remains under-explored. In this…

The present study was designed to explore the role of Rebousi et al's primary 6th grade history school book in evaluating the experience of a nation but also to examine the causes behind the reactions of political parties, historians and the wider public. History books and politics have very deep roots that reflect on old responsibilities,…

Accounting staff play a more and more important role in enterprises and the ability to handle tax related business is one of the necessary abilities of accounting staff. At present, some problems exist in system setting, content teaching, textbook construction, teaching method and so on of tax law course in institutions of higher learning. The…

A description is given of the process of developing a casebook prototype that combined vignettes, collected from 22 mentor teachers, by experienced teachers with theoretical knowledge. Use of cases in inservice teacher education and other areas of educator education are discussed. A sample case is included. (IAH)

Research has indicated that current information about reading and the effective teaching of reading has not yet made much impact on content area textbooks. As a result, there is much room for improvement in how textbooks are written. Recent research has yielded a great deal of information about what makes a text more understandable and supportive…

There have been a great many good and varied textbooks in the history of education. For example, there was L.F. Magnitskii's "Arithmetic," L.N. Tolstoy's "Primer," and the Bible, which can also be thought of as a textbook. None of them is like the others at all. Each one is suitable for dealing with its own objectives in the…

Organized in three sections, this report presents the first case study from a project aimed at developing prototypes of ideal textbook chapters. The report (1) discusses the Ideal Text Project, in which a number of researchers in instructional science have been challenged to design a textbook chapter that incorporates the design features they…

This volume includes papers presented at the 1998 Japan Association for Language Teaching Conference. Section 1, "Voices of Experience," includes: "Towards More Use of English in Class by JTEs" (Midori Iwano); "Paperless Portfolios" (Tim Stewart); "Textbook Creation in Reverse Order for Chinese" (Chou Jine…