This book provides a wide-ranging and in-depth theoretical perspective on dialogue in teaching. It explores the philosophy of dialogism as a social theory of language and explains its importance in teaching and learning. Departing from the more traditional teacher-led mode of teacher-student communication, the dialogic approach is more egalitarian…

This study examined counseling students' experiences of a group course on the culture of Whiteness. The students reported changes in their White racial identities that included a new awareness of personal race, racial privileges, and a commitment to antiracism. Course tenets cited by students as promoting learning are included.

Children with developmental disabilities are trained using different teaching arrangements. One of these arrangements is called small-group teaching. It has been ascertained that a small-group teaching arrangement is more effective than a one-to-one teaching arrangement. In that sense, teaching academic skills to pre-school children in small-group…

Observational learning is the process used to explain the acquisition of novel behaviors or performance of previously acquired behaviors under novel conditions after observing the behavior of another person and the consequences that follow the behavior. Many learners with autism do not attend to environmental stimuli at a level sufficient to learn…

Children with the lowest oral language and early literacy skills at entry to kindergarten are the most vulnerable to poor literacy outcomes. This article describes the programmatic development of a Tier 3 early literacy intervention for preschool children who are most in need of intensive support to achieve early literacy outcomes. The…

This study explores alternative approaches for teaching general education courses burdened with serving extremely large enrollments. It compares the effectiveness of a self-contained course in which each course section is taught by one instructor to a large lecture/small lab format in which all course enrollees attend one large lecture section and…

The high attrition rate among science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors has long been an area of concern for institutions and educational researchers. The transition from introductory to advanced courses has been identified as a particularly "leaky" point along the STEM pipeline, and students who struggle early in…

University students who do not declare geography as their major are at risk of poor motivation to learn in an introductory geography class. However, research exploring the role of non-majors' motivation is lacking. This study examines motivational factors impacting non-geography students' engagement and performance. The findings suggest that…

Imagine the challenge of being immersed in a dynamic learning network where you play brinkmanship with being overwhelmed by a plethora of information, comments, and conversations on a topic of intense interest to you. Through adept facilitation, the comments and encouragement of fellow participants, and your own perseverance, you develop a network…

This Teaching Tips describes a yearlong process of facilitating meaningful discussion groups about literature with first-grade students in an urban Title I school. At the beginning of the year, the teacher provided explicit instruction in speaking and listening skills to support students with the social skills needed for thoughtful discussion. She…

This paper focuses on commonalities and differences of three approaches to large-scale professional development (PD) in mathematics education, based on two studies from Germany and one from the United States of America. All three initiatives break new ground in improving PD targeted at educating "multipliers", and in all three cases…

Nurture groups (NGs) are an intervention implemented to improve the social, emotional and behavioural functioning of vulnerable children and they are increasingly being used within secondary school settings (Colley 2009). The psychological processes underpinning change within a NG intervention for adolescents has been identified as a topic that…

There is currently very little research investigating the impact of nurture groups on children in their home context, particularly with regard to changes in the parent-child relationship. Where a positive impact upon this relationship has been previously found (e.g. Binnie & Allen, 2008, Cooper & Whitebread, 2007), the underlying processes…

Response to Intervention (RTI) is defined by the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) as the practice of providing high-quality instruction and intervention matched to student needs and using learning rate over time and level of performance to make important educational decisions (2007). Both IDEA 2004 and the…

Internationally, classes in higher education institutions are becoming larger and more diverse. Support for "non-traditional" students has often taken the form of additional remedial classes offered outside the main curriculum, which has met with limited success. Sociocultural theories of learning argue that the potential clash between…