This dissertation consists of two articles which discuss the establishment of collective cognitive responsibility in high school mathematics classrooms. I use collective cognitive responsibility as a framework for interpreting the extent to which students see themselves as responsible for building knowledge as a community. I adapted this framework…

The "question of the animal" represents an area of emergent interest in the environmental education field, as researchers critically consider human-animal relations and animal advocacy in their work. Following a group discussion at the 10th Seminar in Health and Environmental Education Research, the authors of this paper share experiences,…

Shanklin understands the value of civil, public discourse in a democratic society and the need to impart that to our students. She tells us that "when students enter a community where their use of growing literacy abilities is both respected and expected, they are more likely to use what they do know, and even to push themselves further, to…

In group conversations, not speaking is the state of affairs experienced by most people most of the time; I refer to this as "conversational latency." Hypothesizing that conversational latency affects one's discursive options, I analyze the association between latency (operationalized as the number of turns that elapsed since the current speaker…

Over the last two decades, art teachers and museum educators have increasingly embraced group dialogue to help students make meaning from works of art. To an outside observer, most dialogues about art could appear to be the same. Nevertheless, careful analysis reveals that the spirit and dynamics can differ greatly from one dialogue to the next.…

Teaching students to use and interpret representations in science is critically important if they are to become scientifically literate and learn how to communicate their understandings and learning in science. This study involved 248 students (119 boys and 129 girls) from 26 grade 6 teachers' classes in nine primary schools in Brisbane,…

The author experienced the introduction of the Internet as a high school student. Reflecting on that experience, he now realizes that he did not understand the possibilities offered by chat rooms, instant messaging, and other Internet-based communication tools to increase sociopolitical connectedness. As the teacher of an eleventh grade social…

This research report examines how two groups of bilingual algebra students made connections among representations while solving a non-routine generalization problem. Using a socio-cultural orientation to mathematics learning, together with a semiotic lens on students' joint mathematical activity, this report details the type of connections among…

This study investigates students' work on analyzing a literary text, a cartoon strip, with focus on their use of instructional, analytical concepts. Excerpts from a group conversation and from individually written texts are analyzed from a sociocultural, dialogical perspective. The analysis of the conversation shows how such concepts help the…

A critical review of research to date suggests a need to explore the development of graduate student research capacity from the standpoint of graduate students. Six members of an interdisciplinary graduate student colloquium at the Centre for Youth and Society (Victoria, Canada) offer their perspective. Our research involved four phases, each…

Institutions of postsecondary education are poised to leverage the presence of racial diversity to educate for social change. The purpose of this study was to examine how a race/ethnicity intergroup dialogue facilitates the development of confidence and frequency of white college students' engagement in actions that are congruent with the…

This article explores perspectives and strands of thought among teachers from five countries about power dynamics in learning environments, perspectives on power of dominant cultures and impacts of power on concepts of citizenship and social justice. Discourses revealed teachers have some understanding of how power impacts teaching and learning,…

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…

Time is limited. Teachers often struggle to address the diverse needs of learners in their classrooms, especially when faced with academic and social skills concerns. Finding effective ways to teach social skills in the context of academic instruction makes sense. Books by Dr. Seuss provide a variety of high-interest stories that can be used to…

This case study reports on patterns of participation in a virtual collaboratory organised around goals associated with the involvement of graduate students in research and writing projects. Traditionally, distance learning classrooms have been devoted to teaching content matter (in a virtual context) yet this case study reports on the use of…