Contemporary discussions of education in blended-learning environments increasingly emphasize the social nature of learning which emphasizes interactions among students, or among students and instructors. These interactions can occur asynchronously using a text based discussion forum. A text-based discussion forum, however, may not work well for…

In this article, we examine the relationship between classroom talk, teacher-student roles and paradigms for literacy and learning in two ninth-grade English Language Arts classes. Our goal was to understand how these roles and practices socialized students into norms for academic language and literacy as they read and wrote poetry in preparation…

Teacher reflection has been promoted as a necessary tool for educators to sustain responsive instructional practices. A variety of approaches for integrating inquiry into teaching and reflection in practice emerged from extensive and intensive efforts to reform teacher preparation programs. Based on those conceptualizations, a three-level model of…

The purpose of this research study was to investigate the perceptions of students entering an online bachelors program in a Midwest university that had either previously graduated from a regional Community College or has taken some classes but did not have an Associate's Degree from a Community College. This study analyzed the student's perception…

In this paper, we argue that emotion in English classrooms is a mediated action mobilized through discursive and material practices that transform texts and signs. We first provide an overview of the current state of English as a secondary school subject in the United States to provide a context for our work on emotion within a critical literacy…

Peer-mediated instructional strategies such as cooperative learning are commonly used in general education classrooms in secondary schools; however, students with disabilities often lack the group interaction and discussion skills necessary to fully benefit from evidence-based interventions. The present study used a multiple baseline across…

The concept of communities of practice (CoP) was first introduced by Lave and Wenger in their short monograph, "Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation." Since then, the concept has become immensely popular in a variety of disciplines. This dissertation traces the concept of CoP back to its inception and early transformation at the…

School violence is a complex cultural problem that affects most schools. This study used a participatory action research model involving mapmaking, photography and intercultural grouping to understand how one school's physical environment and social geography contributed to interethnic tensions on campus. The study found that mapmaking allowed…

This new text contains parts of Bornstein and Lamb's "Developmental Science, 6th edition", along with new introductory material, providing a cutting edge and comprehensive overview of social and personality development. Each of the world-renowned contributors masterfully introduces the history and systems, methodologies, and measurement and…

Online learning is an important and rapidly growing area, and asynchronous discussions are a vital component of online courses. This doctoral study examined the influence of discussion moderator messages, specifically messages with direct instruction content, had on those discussions. This study obtained data from content analysis of course…

This study investigated how university students behaved and interacted as they were grouped in large and small groups and while they engaged in intra-group and inter-group peer assessment. One hundred forty five students from two classes at a university in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam participated in this one-term study. The students worked in…

The influence of asynchronous discussion in a virtual learning environment, Blackboard, on subsequent coursework grades was examined with 166 psychology students to determine whether asking questions of the tutor online, and/or reading the questions and the given advice, influenced the grades on the report they were writing. A repeated-measures…

Two frequently-used discussion protocols were investigated as part of a program to implement teaching cases in undergraduate educational psychology classes designed for preservice teachers. One protocol involved synchronous face-to-face (FTF) discussion of teaching cases, which occurred in class after students had individually completed written…

This essay presents the theoretical framework and main results of a research on intercultural mediation which has been performed in eight multicultural classrooms of Italian secondary schools. Intercultural mediation is conceived as a form of dialogic communication which should empower empathic and equal relationships between the participants by…

What occurs when an African American woman professor and a European American woman professor review narrative data and interpret what the students write differently? This research illustrates how race and the experience of two ethnically different female researchers impact data analysis of teachers' interactions with narratives of personal past…