The primary purpose of this paper is to emphasize and reiterate the centrality of the faculty role in tutoring and learning centers, where peer-to-peer, discipline-specific collaborative learning is the primary objective. This paper provides a breadth of content for practitioners in the field and also assists those seeking to understand the unique…

The author has taught writing/communication for five years and consecutively for four. Preceding both periods of teaching were very informative and groundbreaking years as a tutor in two amazing communication centers. To say that these centers had a profound impact on the pedagogy of the author, is an understatement. The author has always strived…

Ben Opie is a Melbourne-based oboist with a diverse and eclectic career performing across the entire repertoire for oboe. He has performed in Europe, the Middle East, North America, and Australia as a soloist, collaborator, and an orchestral musician. His work across the globe has earned him multiple awards and recognitions in music. As a leader…

Unrest, crime, and poverty in Central America and other parts of the world have led to periodic migrations of unaccompanied children and young refugees into the United States. These children then enroll in U.S. schools--public education for all children, including undocumented children, is a right guaranteed by the 1982 "Plyler v. Doe"…

Writing center workers are agents of change whose practices might reverse the resegregation and new racism occurring in the country. As leaders in the academy who advance a "pedagogy of hope," writing center workers model a practice for bringing about a lasting and abundant multicultural community. Starting with the writing center at the…

Evidence collected on the effectiveness of four educational technologies is briefly reviewed. The authors conclude that there is reasonable evidence that computer-assisted instruction can have at least a modest effect on improving learning and probably more when its instructional approaches are properly matched to instructional objectives, that…

Intelligent language tutoring systems (ILTS) typically analyze learner input to diagnose learner language properties and provide individualized feedback. Despite a long history of ILTS research, such systems are virtually absent from real-life foreign language teaching (FLT). Taking a step toward more closely linking ILTS research to real-life…

As the population of international--and particularly Chinese--students grows in US academic institutions, it is critical that writing center tutors be able to address these students' needs. However, whereas writing tutors at the author's institution are often taught to be indirect and focus on higher order concerns, such strategies are not always…

Peer-assisted learning as "de rigueur" is reverberating in medical institutions around the world. Anatomy classroom activities are challenging and different, and the stressful environment of dissection rooms poses a greater challenge than what can be addressed through peer-assisted learning. It is here that "near-peer role modeling" is not only…

This article reports on a collaborative research project which involved first-year distance learners of Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish at a New Zealand university. Drawing on the principles of Allwright's exploratory practice, the study aimed to gain an insight into the learners' experiences and conceptualisations in terms of their…

In this essay, the author discusses her journey from her first year of the PhD program at USC, and the work she is doing now for a company that builds infrastructure in Afghanistan. She explores the ways in which studies for her 1985 PhD in Rhetoric, Linguistics and Literature did and did not prepare her for the work she does now. Her memoir…

Proposes that there is a need for a specially trained group of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) literacy tutors for college and university tutoring and writing centers. Argues that literacy tutors with a sufficient background in linguistics and second language acquisition would be better equipped to handle non-native speakers' requests for…

More than seven years ago, President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) into law. Sweeping calls for testing, intervening in persistently low-performing schools, and policing teacher quality made it the most ambitious legislation on K-12 schooling in American history. The law, due for congressional reauthorization in 2007, still…

Presents an alternative architecture for intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) that is based on (1) the understanding/explanation process for tutoring and (2) the learner-tutor duality. Learner and tutor models are explained, knowledge types are described, and suggestions for further work are given. (18 references) (LRW)

The Washington, D.C. school system has a long history of poor academic achievement; however, over the past decade, the District of Columbia has made strides in offering families greater choice about which schools their children attend, thanks to a strong charter school law and the federally funded D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. District…