Diverse schools offer enriched academic and social environments, as students and families of different backgrounds and experiences provide a vibrant mosaic of insights, perspectives, and skills. To take advantage of the unique opportunities that diversity brings, schools must value and effectively connect with students and families of all…

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mae West would seem to have little in common, but there is one thing they both understood--the importance of body language. Educators, psychologists, anthropologists and sociologists define body language or nonverbal communication as communication without words. It includes overt behaviors such as facial expressions, eye…

In the fall of 2009, a team from the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning and funded by the Stuart Foundation convened six discussion groups to explore how teachers and foster children and youth interact in the classroom to improve educational outcomes. The discussion group sessions were held in three California counties--Fresno, Orange,…

Background/Context: Students spend a large part of their time in schools in silence. However, teachers tend to spend most of their time attending to student talk. Anthropological and linguistic research has contributed to an understanding of silence in particular communities, offering explanations for students' silence in school. This research…

The study presented in this paper involved 124 Singaporean pre-service teachers who were attending a core information and communications technology (ICT) module, which is a component of their teacher education program. During this module, the pre-service teachers were introduced to the interactive whiteboard (IWB) through an instructional approach…

The purpose of this study was to assess three methods of delivering in-service professional development regarding constructivist curriculum for early childhood educators. Educators in 44 not-for-profit child care centres in three Canadian cities were studied; 94 educators with formal preservice training participated. The three methods were (a) a…

Today's preschool teachers are educating a diverse population of children, with many from homes where English is not the first language. In light of this growing number of English Language Learners (ELLs) in preschool, researchers have investigated ways to support ELLs' emergent literacy development. One of the ways to support ELLs' emergent…

Female students have been discriminated against right from birth in their various cultures and this affects the way they perform in Spoken English class, and how they rate themselves. They have been conditioned to believe that the male gender is superior to the female gender, so they leave the male students to excel in spoken English, while they…

Previous research into listening has tended to focus on individual processing rather than on how sociocultural contexts mediate the nature and quality of listening. This article draws on a study involving observations of listening lessons conducted by ten English teachers regarded as skilled practitioners, interviews with these teachers and with…

This case study focuses on a teacher who discloses a learning disability to her Principal. Given the teacher's challenges in retention of her content material, the district is faced with how to handle the personnel situation of an employee with a disability. This case raises questions of how to balance the needs and interests of students with the…

The study investigated how to facilitate teachers in developing their work in improving the teaching and learning of children with visual impairment (CVI) accommodated in ordinary classrooms. The study takes the form of collaborative action research where the researcher works in collaboration with the teachers. The project is being conducted in…

Background/Context: A common perspective found in the literature on classroom activity structures hypothesizes that a whole-class mode of instruction is linked with increased problems of achievement motivation for low-achieving students. If whole-class methods of instruction (e.g., recitation-style question-and-answer sessions) are rich in…

Under the Israeli language education policy, the mother tongue is learned first for several years, followed by a second language (English for Jews, Hebrew for Arabs) and then a third language (English for Arabs, Arabic/French for Jews). This type of limited bilingualism seems to suit the Israeli reality in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict,…

This paper is an instrumental case study of an alternative assessment method, using a tool called ELM (Eye Light Monitor). ELM proposes a way to keep a finger on the pulse of every child, being attentive to emerging transitions in various parameters of his/her well-being that might affect his/her classroom behaviour and work, and might assist in…

While China has certainly taken a great stride in English teaching and learning since its opening up policy about 30 years ago, there's no denying the fact that a lot of concomitant problems occur during its development. This paper explores into two of the hot issues nowadays and presents the author's own experiences in two strikingly different…