Effective communication between faculty members and students is one of the concerns of the educational stakeholders at the Northern Border University, Saudi Arabia. This study investigates the relationship between teachers' effective communication and students' academic achievement at the Northern Border University. The survey questionnaire…

Shrinking the achievement gap in mathematics is a tall order. One way to approach this challenge is to think about how the achievement gap manifests itself in the classroom and take concrete action. For example, opportunities to participate in activities that involve mathematical reasoning and argumentation in a safe and supportive manner are…

This article argues that, in informing our understanding of the possibilities and challenges associated with new technologies in educational contexts, we need to explore what counts to children when using digital texts in classrooms, and what children think counts for their teachers. It suggests that such insights can be gained by investigating…

Incidental grammar acquisition involves learners "picking up" a grammatical feature while their primary focus is on some other aspect of language--either message content or another language feature that is taught directly. This article reports a study of children's incidental grammar acquisition of two grammatical features--plural…

This study presents a series of three experiments that focus on how distributed scaffolding influences learners' conceptual understanding and reasoning from combined levels of triangulation, at the interactive level (discourses within a focus group) and the collective level (class). Three inquiry lessons on plate tectonics (LPT) were designed,…

This article characterizes "engagement in science learning" from a sociocultural perspective and offers a mixed method approach to measuring engagement that combines critical discourse analysis (CDA) and social network analysis (SNA). Conceptualizing engagement from a sociocultural perspective, the article discusses the advantages of a…

This study investigates the use of three major categories of DMs by 40 male Saudi EFL teachers in their English classrooms, viz., additive, causative, and adversative DMs. The analysis revealed that the participant teachers used the three major DM categories; however, the additive discourse markers recorded the highest mean scores. The findings…

The case study is an attempt to understand how students experience intercultural classroom communication and what kind of competence they need to cope in intercultural classroom communication. The context is a supplementary course in English for university enrolment in Denmark. It is a multinational student body and all the students have finished…

Ostensibly, the orientation towards learning outcomes in adult English language and literacy delivery ensures that the focus is on standardised skill development and knowledge acquisition of students. Such measureable development is seen as foundational to broader employability skills and job readiness. It is an agenda however which ignores the…

Drawing on recent conversation-analytic and socio-interactionist research on students' participation in L1 and L2 classroom interaction in teacher-fronted activities, this paper makes a step further by presenting an exploratory study of students' displays of willingness to participate (WTP) in classroom interaction and pedagogical activities…

Introduction: Since the Japanese government has called for English to be taught through English (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2003), there has been increasing interest in English language classrooms in upper secondary schools. The government has proposed English proficiency scores that Japanese teachers of…

Vision and Change states that one of the major changes in the way we design biology courses should be a switch in approach from teacher-centered learning to student-centered learning and identifies active learning as a recommended methods. Studies show performance benefits for students taking courses that use active learning. What is unknown is…

The study reported in this article investigated the influence of a research-informed, school-based, professional development workshop programme on the quality of classroom dialogue using the interactive whiteboard (IWB). The programme aimed to develop a dialogic approach to teaching and learning mediated through more interactive uses of the IWB,…

An interaction is the heart of language teaching and learning. Classroom interaction initially refers to conversational exchanges between teacher, as an initiator, and students, as responders. However, the dimension of interaction in the classroom is not solely on conversational adjustment among interactants. The aim of the study was to report the…

In recent years, I have cultivated an almost pathological resistance to grading. Here I explore the reasons why and describe how I eventually recovered. In particular, I propose that although grading, or more explicitly, effective assessment of student learning, is a challenging component of a mathematics instructor's job description, reflective…