The paper investigated four Chinese graduate students' perceptions of the major differences between North American and Chinese classroom teaching styles. Major differences in the following five areas were identified: 1) the teacher's role, 2) the student's role, 3) the form of class organization, 4) the teacher's expectations, and 5) the student's…

In U. S. schools, which have a primarily White teaching force but an increasingly non-White student population, students and teachers may not be able to complete caring encounters based on their differing communication patterns. Therefore, it is important to understand what behaviors students view as caring so that teachers can complete caring…

Interviews with students at an all-Black, all-male school in a major northeastern city revealed that a significant proportion of the participating students had a strong preference for practical, demonstrative explanations of new concepts and information that are directly related to their everyday experiential realities. These findings suggest that…

The importance of student talk in mathematics classrooms figures prominently in curriculum and teaching standards. Student talk is a vehicle for increasing student learning and for helping teachers monitor student understanding and inform student instructional practices. Although researchers have begun to study the moves teachers may make to…

Leadership development has traditionally focused on administrators' responsibility for promoting and enhancing school improvement efforts. Today, there are a growing number of educators who believe leadership in the classroom plays an equally significant role in building a strong school culture. In Teacher Leadership, Elaine L. Wilmore offers a…

Ten high-school students of English as a second language (ESL) intensively studied the modified version of "The Cay" (retold by Strange, 1997). During their study the teacher asked questions designed to elicit students' comprehension and understanding of racism and prejudice as the main themes of "The Cay". Analysis of classroom discourse data…

Cross-cultural validity of teacher immediacy scales is a constant concern in instructional communication research. The present study examines the validity of two existing teacher immediacy scales: the Revised Nonverbal Immediacy Measure (RNIM) and the Chinese Teacher Immediacy Scale (CTIS) in U.S., Chinese, German, and Japanese cultures. Results…

Since the 1950s, the United States education system has undergone a dramatic demographic shift characterized by a continuing increase in the cultural diversification of the student population. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 1999-2000 international students from East Asia (i.e., China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and…

Literature suggests that communication is a protective factor against high-risk sexual behavior. This study assessed the impact of a fourth-grade communication-centered life skills program on attitudes, norms, self-efficacy, behaviors, and intentions toward communication about difficult subjects. Participants included 1,581 low-income Mexican…

This article reports on a study investigating ways students from Japan studying English as a second language at an American community college encounter cultural dissonance in their classroom interactions. I take a sociocognitive view rooted in the work of Bakhtin and Vygostky to explore the ways language, culture, and cognitive processes interplay…

This paper reports on a study of disagreement strategies used by Japanese learners of English (JLEs) studying at language schools in New Zealand. The study stemmed from an observation that JLEs were unwilling to express disagreements in exchanges with high-power (+P) interlocutors, possibly due to the threat of face-loss and the consequences of…

Classroom communication between deaf students was modeled using a question-and-answer game. Participants consisted of student pairs that relied on spoken language, pairs that relied on American Sign Language (ASL), and mixed pairs in which one student used spoken language and one signed. Although the task encouraged students to request…

Qualitative research describing and theorizing about the emerging civic identities of diverse youth is scarce. This study provides a textured view of how civic identity is constructed and negotiated by racially and socioeconomically diverse adolescents, based on interviews and in-class discussions conducted with students in four public secondary…

This paper is based upon the findings of an interpretative, school-based study of pupil, teacher and parent perceptions of disengagement within the primary classroom. It examines how pupil and parent perceptions support or challenge professional discourses about pupil behaviour, raising questions about the nature of disengagement and the…

Writing behaviors of grade 1 children were explored as they used word processors to support their writing. Information was gathered in the form of field notes and audiotape transcripts from classroom observation sessions, along with informal interviews with students and teachers. Themes which emerged from the data analysis suggested a combination…