In Maldives, educational policy makers are beginning to explore the value of ICT and web tools as a medium of continuous professional development for school leaders and teachers. This paper reports on insights and responses of a group of five school leaders who participated in a web based distance education course. For most of them, this was their…

In the last five decades or so, in many parts of the globe, TESOL teacher supervision and professional development have evolved from summative to more formative perspectives and practices. In Niger, past research has done little to examine the state of the current TESOL teacher supervision and professional development. This qualitative study…

This study was carried out in the context of formative assessment where assessment and learning were integrated to enhance both teaching and learning. The purpose of the study was to: (a) identify pupils' ideas about biological inheritance through the use of a concept cartoon, pupils' drawings and talk, and (b) devise scaffolding structures that…

Classrooms are a primary site of evidence about learning. Yet classroom proceedings often occur behind closed doors and hence evidence of student learning is observable only to the classroom teacher. The informal and undocumented nature of this information means that it is rarely included in statistical models or quantifiable analyses. This…

Contemporary Western society has encouraged an obesogenic culture of eating amongst youth. Multiple factors may influence an adolescent's susceptibility to this eating culture, and thus act as a barrier to healthy eating. Given the increasing prevalence of obesity amongst adolescents, the need to reduce these barriers has become a necessity.…

We conducted 2 studies that investigated student outcomes when using discussion Web pages in psychology classes. In Study 1, we assigned 213 students enrolled in Introduction to Psychology courses to either a mandatory or an optional Web page discussion condition. Students used the discussion Web page significantly more often and performed…

Aiming for experiences that are both culturally responsible and personally meaningful, the author offers guidelines to help museum educators and art teachers negotiate contextual information within group investigations of works of art. In people's encounters with art, dialogue exists on several levels. There is dialogue between a viewer and a…

Over the last two years, the work of the CEE-GS has included the establishment of the organization, participation in the CEE leadership summit in May 2005, a panel discussion about PhD student issues at last year's NCTE conference, and the establishment of a CEE-GS executive committee. Potential future pursuits include the development of a CEE-GS…

Collaborative Retrospective Miscue Analysis (CRMA) is a process where students participate in a small group discussion about their reading miscues, retellings, and thinking about reading. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the self-efficacy beliefs students hold about their reading skills and abilities while engaged in CRMA.…

This article considers previously ignored aspects of verbal communication, humor and laughter, as critical components of social interaction within group discussions. Drawing on data from focus groups, Robinson uses a feminist perspective to explore how mothers living in areas of poverty in Liverpool, UK, use humor and laughter to discuss their…

Read-alouds nurture language and literacy practices required for a successful schooling experience. They motivate children to read more and nurture language expression across the curriculum. Read-alouds not only provide content for learning, they also introduce authors and genres; model ways of reading, types of writing, and other ways of…

This study investigated graduate students' perceptions of the online collaborations and the factors that contribute to the quality of online discussion with a qualitative case study. Data were collected through interviews with 20 graduate students in an online course, their online discourse, and the instructor's observation notes. The case study…

The aim of this study was to explore how learners operating in a small group reach shared understanding as they work out joint research questions and build a theoretical framework and to identify the resources and tools they used in the process. The learners' own interpretations of their group activities and learning were also taken into account.…

The research reported in this paper investigates the impact of, and challenges with, encouraging argumentation on students' conceptual development in physics. It draws its theoretical framework from two socio-cultural perspectives of learning, i.e. that learning science occurs in a social setting and secondly that learning science is a discursive…

The rapid development of ICT (information technology and communication) in the last two decades has changed society substantially as a whole. For higher education institutions, the external environment pressure to incorporate ICT in their educational and administrative processes has forced them to invest in resources for infrastructure and…