School systems often implement character education initiatives in reaction to a violent event. Following the school shootings that occurred in the 1990s, many school systems started to implement character education and violence prevention programs. Unfortunately, because the efforts were reactive, little thought was given to sustainability…

This research was commissioned by COI and DCSF to understand in depth, the barriers, motivators and messages for parents to encourage participation in positive activities for young people. Within this the research was designed to understand the level of influence of parents in whether a young person participates/what a young person might…

Pedagogy and assessment are critical aspects of classroom teaching at all educational levels. Although training in these areas is often a primary focus of university programs preparing pre-service teachers, it is not necessarily part of the training for university faculty. Using survey methodology, this descriptive study investigated the…

Drawing on data collected during the second year of a longitudinal qualitative study that followed over 10 Latino/a bilingual students, this article foregrounds the experiences of participants during their sixth-grade year. The principle data sources included structured and unstructured interviews with teachers and students, school observations,…

Mercer, N. (1995) coined the term interthinking to link the cognitive and social functions of group talk. Essentially, interthinking means using talk to think collectively, to engage with others' ideas through oral language. In this article I share four excerpts from small group interactive read-aloud sessions that were conducted with Grade 1…

Ambiguity in group discussions as a resource for communication is studied. How students, aged 13-15 years, elaborate on the concept energy through dialogue is described. Group interviews were conducted with 15 hearing and 20 deaf students. Three probes were used to initiate discussions on different meanings of energy. The results show that the…

How do students bridge everyday life views into physics understanding? We report from in-depth analysis of one group of four students, video-recorded over 135 min solving a context rich problem (CRP). Through transcripts of the group's conversations and from flow-charts made of the group talk we have categorised how students' experiences develop…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 18th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2021), held virtually, due to an exceptional situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, from October 13-15, 2021, and organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society…

Studies have shown that electronic discussion can be used effectively to teach critical thinking and can achieve greater understanding. The use of online discussions is common in polytechnics and universities, and many schools in Singapore have begun to introduce online forums for discussion beyond the classroom. This research investigates lower…

This article examines how mentoring and female role models enhance perceptions of self-worth and career aspirations for adolescent girls from low socioeconomic backgrounds. It describes an eight-week project that provided nine girls from the slums of Bangladesh with female role models and mentors in a modern work environment. The project involved…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the current school-based management (SBM) policy reform in Indonesia, with an emphasis on the impacts of shifting authority and responsibility to school level, as well as challenges confronted by the school council members, followed by remedial measures to minimize the problems.…

For many students, school is not a place to explore new ideas or develop fresh perspectives. School is a place where there are "positions" that they must "defend" in the "arena" of the classroom. If they do muster up the courage to participate, they have learned what it is like to lose: they describe it as being…

A study examined how parliamentary procedure may be used in everyday group discussion and how its principles may be applied in committee meetings and discussions that do not demand formal parliamentary procedures. Subjects, 127 undergraduate and 56 graduate students attending two Canadian universities, were surveyed over a 4-year period. Subjects…

Issues and questions as discussion possibilities were listed. Some topics considered were the curriculum, the teacher, special education children, and the community school relationship. Finally, recommendations for art programs and special education students were made. (RK)