This study presents findings from analyses of naturally occurring literacy events, where children jointly focus on reading and writing letters of the alphabet, illustrating social constructions of learning created through language and embodied action. Video recorded data from two different families living in an urban low-income area in Tanzania is…

Leadership is currently viewed as a guarantee for educational quality and reforms, as a crucial component for schools' capacity building and as a major contributor to the transformation of practices. Although an array of leadership studies report on the need for leadership by demonstrating what leaders must do or how leadership practices should be…

Introduction: This paper investigates participatory practices in library activities for young children and their care-givers in a specific cultural context. Method: Using an ethnographic approach data were collected through participant observations of songtimes for babies and toddlers, and interviews and group interviews with staff and…

Background: A sequential analysis of classroom discourse is needed to investigate the conditions under which the triadic initiation-response-feedback (IRF) pattern may host different teaching orientations. Aim: The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to describe the characteristics of classroom discourse and, second, to identify and explore…

Validating and generalizing from holistic observation protocols of classroom practice have proven difficult. These tools miss crucial classroom characteristics, like the type of instruction, the organization of learners, and the level of cognitive engagement that occur differentially in the time span of a lesson. As a result, this study examined…

Establishing a communication-rich classroom can be difficult. This article describes the process and findings of a practitioner action research study addressing the question of how teachers can interact with their students while they are working in groups to encourage and enhance student-to-student communication. Recommended research-based teacher…

The current investigation examined continuity from 9-months to 4-years of age in father-child interaction in instrumental child care activities, as well as enrichment and play activities, using data collected from 8,450 children with residential fathers included in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). Additionally, social…

The study buddy is a learning strategy employed in a graduate distance course to promote informal peer reviewing of assignments before submission. This strategy promotes student-student interaction and helps break the social isolation of distance learning. Given the concern by Arum and Roksa (2011) that student-student interaction may be…

As much as play is researched and discussed by people interested in children and childhood, studies often fail to examine closely the ways that kids accomplish their play. This study sought to answer the question of how children sustain their play interactions. By making use of qualitative methods to collect and analyze data, the play of…

This dissertation explores co-construction of a situated activity in a current unit by mainly focusing on hearers' actions. The "co-construction" involves a process of interaction in which speakers and hearers jointly construct the form and the meaning of ongoing utterances even when they disagree with each other (Jacoby & Ochs,…

This article is about experimentation in both practical and mental activity and uses data from a series of studies with preschool children. The article focuses on personal experimentation, which is aimed at discovering relations, rather than the more utilitarian experimentation that is aimed at solving practical tasks. Personal experimentation…

This study aimed to investigate the perceptions, interactions and behaviours of different-ability college students when they worked on different types of assessments. Two classes of 145 Vietnamese college students participated in this three-month study. The students were assigned to mixed-ability groups, each of which consisted of five students.…

The aim of this study is to test collaborative concept mapping activities using computers in a classroom scenario and to evaluate the possibilities that Elkar-CM offers for collaboratively learning non-technical topics. Elkar-CM is a multi-lingual and multi-media software program designed for drawing concept maps (CMs) collaboratively. Concept…

This study examined the role of incidental focus on form (FonF) in adult English-as-a-second-language classrooms. Specifically, it explored the extent to which the amount, type, and effectiveness of FonF were related to differences in classroom participation structure, that is, the organization of classroom talk within which FonF may occur. The…

Researchers in second language socialization (SLS) often examine those interactions relating to a learner's integration within a target community. Kramsch and Whiteside (2008) noted the importance of "symbolic competence" in this integration. Symbolic competence, defined as the ability to access contextually relevant social and political…