This paper considers features of domestic and social life aboard sail training vessels, exploring the particular character of life at sea, and how these features contribute to the distinctive character of sail training experience as a context for learning. Methodologically, the study lies in the sociological tradition of ethnography, focusing on…

Orienteering is an outdoor pursuit in which participants try to locate a series of different control points, using only a map and compass (Laubach, 1998). It is a life-long skill that can be taught to all ages in both a natural and urban setting. Adventure education is an approach to teaching where an individual is placed in an unfamiliar…

This review investigates the use of certain types of interaction in mathematics education. These types include interaction between students, interaction between teacher and students, and interaction between students and learning technology. Student-technology interactions are explained by computer programs that use problem-solving strategies and…

Effective leadership begins with positive relationships and a healthy organizational culture. How well do professors of educational leadership model such leadership ideals within their own universities, departments, and work environments? This article addresses the critical need for professors of educational leadership to look within and determine…

Online learning is rapidly becoming a permanent feature of higher education. In a preponderance of instances, online learning is designed using conventional educational practices: lecture, grades, group discussion, and the like. Concerns with traditional pedagogy instantiated by course management systems raise questions about the quality of…

Background/Context: This study builds upon research on teacher professional communities and high school restructuring reforms. It employs a conceptual framework that draws upon theories of "community of practice" and "community of learners." Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study analyzes how teachers' professional inquiry…

In this article I use a double theoretical lens of Bourdieuian (1985, 1991) and Bakhtinian (1981, 1986) perspectives on social space and the dialogism of everyday literacy events to analyze and discuss a classroom literacy event. In this event, which takes place in a diversely populated classroom with a social justice language arts curriculum,…

This paper explores that various uses of group communication in the basic course and how it can be used to bridge and reinforce interpersonal and public speaking skills units. Sections of the paper address group discussion as a content area, integrating small group discussion into the public speaking unit, integrating small groups into the…

This article examines the meaning of collaboration and the impact of ethnocultural diversity through a discussion of assumptions about how people work together, how knowledge is obtained, and how culture impacts assumptions and knowledge attainment. Following an introduction, section 2 on the meaning of collaboration examines various notions of…

This study examined the influence of the African American college student peer group on its members, focusing on the extent to which the peer group impacts the education of its members, and how the process of peer influence occurs within the group. Using social comparison theory, the study drew on a subset of data from a national study sponsored…

The ways in which personal narratives, particularly of familiar stories, are used to ratify group membership are examined. Focus is primarily on co-narrated stories, in which more than one group member participates in the re-telling of a familiar story. A typical instance in which family members collaboratively construct a story is offered as an…

Not only do we need to give students a strong educational foundation, we also must counteract cultural and psychosocial factors that turn minority students away from a curriculum. One of the most powerful aspects of an outdoor education program is that it can provide participants with unique opportunities to work together to solve problems, thus…

This paper summarizes knowledge about team building acquired from participation in a Michigan Adult Education Practitioners Inquiry Project. The first step in team building is to understand the dynamics of the entire group and to identify the unique traits of each member. The paper describes techniques and activities for enhancing communication,…

With the continuing shift toward more decentralized, team-based work structures, efforts to improve quality are often linked to efforts to improve productivity. This ongoing restructuring of the workplace has important implications for technical education. Educators need to have an understanding of how and why organizations are pursuing these…

In recent years, interest in teamwork in the workplace has increased noticeably. For technical educators, the implications of this emphasis on employee involvement and cooperation are clear: they should begin developing the requisite skills in their students before they enter the work force. The skill sets that are needed--in effective…