Today, many students not only access the Internet through desktop and laptop computers at home or at school but also have copious amounts of information at their fingertips via portable devices (e.g., iPods, iPads, netbooks, smartphones). While some teachers welcome the proliferation of portable technologies and easy wireless Internet access, and…

Communicative approach has become popular in ELT in recent years. Good teacher talk lays focus on how effectively it could promote genuine communication in the classroom. In this essay, communicative teacher talk is studied, and its features are explored based on authentic classroom transcripts, and a summary of the existing problems is provided.

This dissertation reports a multi-method study of the cultural, pedagogical, and sociological effects of clickers for students in higher education. A clicker is a small, handheld device used to prompt critical thinking and discussion by student learners. To date, no research studies in the developing literature on Student Response Systems have…

This study was motivated by the continuous quest to explore ways of enhancing students' learning and achievement in social studies in Nigerian secondary schools. The focus of this investigation was the assessment of the communication proficiency of social studies teachers, believing that the teachers' proficiency is a strong factor in effective…

Code-switching is a natural part of being bilingual. Yet two-way immersion programs are known to insist upon separation of languages, discouraging both teachers and students from drawing on both linguistic codes at once. Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power, I examine one second-grade classroom in which the teacher instituted a…

This descriptive study reports findings on the relationship between focus on form, learner uptake and subsequent lexical gains in learners' oral production. The data for the study consisted in 17 45-minute audio-recorded teacher-led conversations, 204 learners' diaries (17 sessions x 12 learners) reporting what they had learned after each…

The purpose of this study is to investigate patterns of linguistic communication in learning and teaching science and to find out how the formation of each pattern was related with the classroom, particularly in Korean middle school context. For this, we observed science classes in three middle schools in Seoul and collected data during lessons…

Drawing evidence from a survey study she conducted in her own online classes as well as from current literature, the author, who has developed and taught several MA TESOL online courses, argues that the effectiveness of online instruction is not determined by the technology but by the instructor. An effective online instructor is one who is truly…

In this article, I analyse the initiation/response/follow-up (IRF) exchanges between teachers and students in teacher-fronted instruction by using transcribed classroom data. Adopting a social constructivist position, I examine ways in which teachers construct or reduce students' learning opportunities in these communications. Furthermore, I…

Discussion-based teaching has long been recognized as a way to promote civic engagement. However, increasing the amount and quality of student talk in social studies classrooms has proven very difficult in practice. This article's purpose is to show how teachers can design a discussion to increase student involvement. A well-designed discussion…

The new EYFS (The Early Years Foundation Stage, DfES, 2007) reinforces that mathematical language and understanding should be developed through stories, songs, games and imaginative play; that practical activities should provide opportunities for children to practise and talk about their developing mathematical understanding. Despite a huge number…

This dissertation was written collaboratively by Cynthia Warren, Linetta Carter, and George Edwards with the exception of chapter 4 which is the individual effort of the aforementioned researchers. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of at-home reading activities and parental involvement on classroom communication arts assessments…

The issue of improving educational outcomes for children and youth in foster care is receiving some long-overdue attention, but the voices of classroom teachers have not been prominent in the discussions so far. To help fill this gap, a team from the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning and funded by the Stuart Foundation convened six…

Jodi Fletcher is a teacher on special assignment in curriculum instruction and assessment for Falcon School District 49 in Colorado. Serving about 12,500 students across 16 schools, the district encompasses the northeastern portion of Colorado Springs and the rural area of Falcon. About 30 percent of students in the district are from military…

Knowledge Building as a theoretical, pedagogical, and technological innovation focuses on the 21st century need to work creatively with knowledge. The team now advancing Knowledge Building spans multiple disciplines, sectors, and cultural contexts. Several teacher-researcher-government partnerships have formed to bring about the systemic changes…