This paper reports on a formative evaluation study of 10 practitioner research projects linked together under the title "Better Communication Skills as a Means of Reducing the Barriers to Learning", which aimed to identify conditions through which practitioner research could help teachers to improve the quality of pupils' classroom talk.…

Group work has been promoted in many countries as a key component of elementary science. However, little guidance is given as to how group work should be organized, and because previous research has seldom been conducted in authentic classrooms, its message is merely indicative. A study is reported, which attempts to address these limitations.…

In this paper we present findings from an empirical study-in-progress that investigates how a teacher integrates technology, specifically an Interactive Whiteboard (IWB), to teach multiliterate practices when reading multi-modal texts. This research was a collaboration between a teacher and a team of university-based researchers as they used…

This study focuses on an attempt by a Swedish secondary school teacher to fashion a more participatory education situation by involving his students in deciding the rules for their group work. Five group sessions were video recorded and examined using a conversation-analytic approach. The findings show a complex interplay between democratic and…

Recently, classroom talk has re-emerged within educational policy as instrumental in delivering standards-based reform in several counties. In England, both the National Numeracy and Literacy Strategies and the National Strategy for Key Stage 3 emphasised the importance of "interactive whole class teaching" (IWT) where "pupils are…

In this article, the author elaborates on how the teacher as researcher can benefit not only the classroom, but the future direction of education research. The answer lies in a greater overlap between teacher education, research, and in-service practice. If the teacher becomes more of a participant in research, working with pre-service teachers…

The purpose of this study was to explore the nature of effective teacher-student verbal interaction during the instructional time with the emphasis on teacher's talk, and its role on linguistically and culturally diverse adult English language learners' (ELL) learning English as a second language. A group of advanced-level English as a Second…

This repeated-measures, counter-balanced study reports on a comparison of quantity and quality of one teacher's language in face-to-face (FTF) and written electronic (WE) discussions with advanced English as a Subsequent Language (ESL) students. Transcripts from the two types of discussions were compared for complexity of teacher input and the…

This is a qualitative study of identities constructed and enacted by four 3rd-grade African American children (two girls and two boys) in an urban classroom that engaged in a year-long, integrated science-literacy project. Juxtaposing narrative and discursive identity lenses, coupled with race and gender perspectives, I examined the ways in which…

This paper presents the results of a small-scale study of codeswitching (CS) between Chinese and English in primary English classrooms with a view to informing classroom interaction with young learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). It analyzes CS of two teachers participating in the Primary English Curriculum Innovation (PECI) project in…

Using a low-inference observational instrument, the authors empirically described and compared pedagogical behaviors in bilingual and structured English-immersion programs serving Spanish-speaking English language learners in a large urban school district in Southeast Texas. The two programs included both intervention/control of each type during…

Thousands of students in California learn English as a second language in schools that utilize exclusively monolingual--English Only--literacy programs. With such programs students do not have the opportunity to use the knowledge of their first language in order to acquire and master their second language. The project of cooperative bi-literacy…

This paper discusses the findings of a case study conducted with an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher at a German secondary school. This case study is part of a research project that investigates the new competencies that EFL teachers need to acquire in order to be able to use the interactive whiteboard (IWB) to develop their practice,…

An ethnographic study examined 2 case study students, "Nick" and "John," as they engaged in an integrated literature-United Sates history class cotaught by an English and a social studies teacher in a high school in New York state. The emergent critical perspectives and pluralistic understandings of Nick and John were examined…

A composition scholar conducted a study of peer response groups in a freshmen composition course to determine what leads to conflict among students in these groups. In the course of her study, however, she found herself deeply perplexed by conflicting roles she had to play as a participant/observer. The ethnographer as a participant/observer is,…