This article focuses on the grammar of Japanese "kara" "because/so" and "kedo" "but", traditionally understood as conjunctive particles whose function is to mark a "subordinate" clause and connect it to a following "main" clause. This article shows that, in conversation, these forms are often used turn-finally without an apparent main clause and…

First-year students at many universities find themselves in new communities, with little understanding of how their new university, city, academic, or career communities function. Developing a student's sense of community can have long-term benefits. Using the theme of "Community" in the basic public speaking course provides students with…

Discussion in this article considers the unfortunate way R.S. Peters made mention of women when it was pertinent to his argumentation: portraying them, directly or indirectly, as abuse-able (murderable), deficient, aberrant, clueless and inconstant. It is argued that the high profile and esteem within which Peter's texts are held within philosophy…

Discover the ways teachers and researchers apply up-to-date TESOL research to meet both content and language acquisition criteria while also affirming students' cultural knowledge, life experiences, and language abilities. Like the high school grades themselves, the chapters in this volume are organized by academic content area including language…

Critical thinking is an essential skill for learners and teachers alike. Therefore, it is essential that educators be given practical strategies for improving their critical thinking skills as well as methods to effectively provide critical thinking skills to their students. The "Handbook of Research on Critical Thinking and Teacher Education…

Despite being identified as an essential scientific practice, argumentation is rarely integrated into instruction. This could be influenced by teachers' pedagogical design capacity (PDC), which considers teaching as a design activity influenced by both instructional resources (such as tools and professional development (PD)) and teacher resources…

Understanding academic vocabulary is essential to student success in school. Use of academic vocabulary words in writing is considered one of the strongest measures of how well a reader understands a given word. In theory, willingness to use academic vocabulary in writing indicates the complexity of acquiring representations of the word's…

Refutation texts have been shown to be effective at promoting knowledge revision. It has been suggested that refutation texts are most effective when the misconception and the correct information are co-activated and integrated with causal networks that support the correct information. We explored two augmentations to a refutation text that might…

Even though science says genetically modified (GM) foods are safe, many consumers remain skeptical of the technology. Additionally, the scientific community has trouble communicating to the public, causing consumers to make uninformed decisions. The Millennial Generation will have more buying power than any other generation before them, and more…

At the beginning of the 1980s, one of the most striking explanations of conceptual change was made by Posner, Strike, Hewson & Gertzog (1982) with a Conceptual Change Theory based on a Scientific Revolution Theory of Kuhn (1970). In Conceptual Change Theory, learning was explained with the Piaget (1970)'s concepts such as assimilation and…

This study explores secondary history, literature, and science teachers' learning in cross-disciplinary professional development (PD) designed to support inquiry in disciplinary literacy instruction. As part of a larger design-based research project, teachers participated in a three-year Teacher Network designed to build knowledge and pedagogical…

Current science education reforms and the new standards (Next Generation Science Standards [NGSS], 2013) advocate that K-12 students gain proficiency in the knowledge-generating practices of scientists. These practices include argumentation, modeling, and coordinating evidence with theories and models. Practice-based instruction is very different…

This article discusses the problem of quality in the production of language tests in the context of Italian language examinations. The concept of quality is closely related to the application of stated standards and related procedures. These standards, developed over the last thirty years, are mainly related to the concepts of the accountability…

Argumentation as a form of introducing children to science has received increasing attention over the past decade. Argumentation tends to be studied and theorized through the lens of individual speakers, who contribute to a conversation by means of opposing statements. M.M. Bakhtin and L.S. Vygotsky independently proposed a very different approach…

This study examined the extent to which fifth-grade students participate in online argumentation and the argument patterns they produced about the inquiry-based investigations completed using the Science Writing Heuristic approach in their science classes. One hundred twenty-nine students from five classes of two teachers in a Midwestern public…