Freire wrote that reading one's world is a necessary precursor to writing it, or conscienzation. The present dissertation, expanding on Kellner's concept of multiple literacies (1998; 2002a; 2005b; 2006a; 2008), explores what it means to read and write one's world in the context of globalization. Given the arrival of a new imaginary, with its…

Training student employees in Educational Outreach and Student Services (EOSS) at Arizona State University's West campus is important to maintaining a knowledgeable and productive workforce. This dissertation describes the results of an action research study in which social media tools were utilized as a delivery mechanism for training student…

Prevalent models of secondary education in the United States have tended to privilege the acquisition of knowledge of scientific disciplines that is often peripheral to the experiences of students. My Advanced Placement Government classes were no different, and this caused me to wonder whether my classes were meeting the often-stated goal of the…

Web 2.0 has afforded a number of opportunities for foreign language learning due to its open, participatory and social nature. A crucial aspect is authenticity--both situational and interactional--since students become involved in meaningful tasks, interacting in the target language with an authentic audience. In this paper we will reflect upon…

The foundations of academic and social learning are laid in the early years of school, and attendance is critical to school success. However, research suggests that chronic absenteeism is a significant problem at the elementary school level (Chang & Romero, 2008; Romero & Lee, 2007). This paper presents the results of an action research…

This paper seeks to explore a web-based teaching activity designed for technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) development in pre-service history teacher education in Turkey. The study is conducted by action research methodology. Using a project-based learning (PBL) approach, the designed activity aims to provide the necessary…

This paper draws on a case study undertaken by an English teacher in a rural school with a Year 12 English class, most of whom had been singularly unsuccessful in terms of NCEA achievement. The case study was undertaken as part of a two-year project, directed by the first author, entitled: "Teachers as writers: Transforming professional…

Nearly 90% of intermediate and middle school students from low-income families in the United States are not proficient in reading. This action research project used a quasi-experimental design to determine the effectiveness of a multi-component reading intervention program for students in grades four through eight at Mother of Sorrows Catholic…

A survey was done of instructors at two satellite campuses located at a distance from the main campus of the University of Lethbridge in order to ascertain both utilization and awareness of library resources and services. Results were enlightening, indicating that lack of awareness and communication is one of the biggest obstacles for these…

Learning environment studies acknowledge that learning takes place within the social realm and that social conditions contribute to the quality of both learning and experience. This can be said to be especially true for environmental learning programs. To access information about students' perceptions of their learning environment, a robust…

Based on appreciative inquiry and threshold concepts from an intercultural learning perspective, the article makes insights into the constructivist social learning practice of Estonian language learning amongst Russian-speaking teachers in Estonia. The application of educational action research methodology, more specifically that of Bridget…

Humans are adept at inferring the mental states underlying other agents' actions, such as goals, beliefs, desires, emotions and other thoughts. We propose a computational framework based on Bayesian inverse planning for modeling human action understanding. The framework represents an intuitive theory of intentional agents' behavior based on the…

The present research examined whether infants as young as 6 months of age would consider what objects a human agent could perceive when interpreting her actions on the objects. In two experiments, the infants took the agent's actions of repeatedly reaching for and grasping one of two possible objects as suggesting her preference for that object…

The cultivation of reflective practice has become a commonly accepted goal of theological education. However, theological educators must face the challenge of teaching and assessing reflective practice. Hypothesizing that this concern is best addressed in community, the authors of this article devised a collaborative action-research project using…

Neuroscience offers more than new empirical evidence about the details of cognitive functions such as language, perception and action. Since it also shows many functions to be highly distributed, interconnected and dependent on mechanisms at different levels of processing, it challenges concepts that are traditionally used to describe these…