The current era of American discourse and dialogue is increasingly characterized as becoming less civilized. This lack of civility, whether real or perceived, negatively impacts our ability as a society to address our most wicked problems. The vast majority of students pursuing undergraduate degrees today seem blissfully unaware of the problems…

The present study aimed at examining the knowledge of Iranian EFL learners in responding to compliments in English, with a focus on the variables of gender, age and educational background. The data were collected through a 24-item English Discourse Completion Task (DCT) to which 40 male and female EFL learners were asked to provide short…

Dialogic teaching--a pedagogical approach that involves students in a collaborative construction of meaning and is characterized by shared control over the key aspects of classroom discourse--has been largely advocated by contemporary research and theory. However, studies in the US and UK continue to document the persistence of monologic…

This article narrates the story of how a peace education program, over the course of a year, shifts from a more traditional form of peace education as conflict resolution skill building to a critical form of peace education. The path of this journey was neither straight nor direct; rather it meandered through an iteration of itself that actually…

The internationalization of higher education has been a major concern in the last decades for a variety of reasons. This concern has been addressed by policymakers in a number of ways, most commonly through increased international partnerships and recruitment of international students. Much of the underlying motivation for internationalization is…

This paper explores the quality of the implementation of the West European Bologna reforms in higher education in a post-soviet country. This process of policy diffusion is analysed using concepts of policy diffusion/transfer and innovation literature, attempting to combine both streams of literature. Despite strong motivation to improve the…

A sentiment held by Dewey and shared by other educators is that learning should enrich and expand everyday experience. However, this goal has not been a focus of research. In this article, I propose "transformative experience" as a construct capable of reflecting this goal and functioning as an empirical research construct. I discuss the…

This paper discusses an oral assessment intervention in environmental education at two tertiary institutions in South Africa. A qualitative study grounded in a social constructivist framework, the inquiry locates learning and assessment of environmental education based on practical activities and first-hand experience within the framework of…

The Council of Europe's 2008 "White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue: 'living together as equals in dignity'" points to the need for shared values upon which intercultural dialogue might rest. In order, however, to overcome the monologic separateness that threatens community, we must educate ourselves to recognize the dialogism of our…

This study was aimed at mapping features of constructivist activities in higher education settings, constructing and validating a new scale for measuring their presence in lecture face-to-face based environments (LBE), seminars (SM), and distance learning environments (DLE). A mix-method approach was implemented in three phases. The first phase…

This interpretive study explores the writing and writing experiences of 2 bilingual, Mexican, immigrant undergraduates at a US university. Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester's (2003) continua model of biliteracy situates writing interactions to understand how students explore and draw on their bilingual and bicultural resources as they develop…

English teachers encourage writing that opens college students to transformative learning through soul work as John Dirkx describes and develops the concept of soul work in his theory of transformative learning. This soul work involves the conscious attempt to bring to the surface myths, images, and metaphors from the unconscious through…

The Silent Socratic Dialogue (SSD) writing warm-up technique places college students in a dialogic setting in which they construct the texts that explore, inform, and challenge each other through a succession of questions and answers. It validates students' voices, ideas, and interactions as worthy of study while engaging them in the…

Want a quick way to get your students happily conversing more in the target language? This practical book shows you how to use formative assessments to gain immediate and lasting improvement in your students' fluency. You'll learn how to: (1) Imbed the 3-minute formative assessment into every lesson with ease; (2) Engage students in peer formative…

As federal mandates purport to improve the academic achievement of all students, the achievement gap between White students and their marginalized peers has not closed. The persistency of the gap raises the notion that the answer to addressing the achievement gap may not lie in policies or practices. The alternative then is to explore the…