This article develops the notion that virtues can be utilized as a means of understanding the professional expertise that science teachers demonstrate when they deal with socioscientific issues. Socioscientific issues are those contentious issues that connect science to the society in which it operates--environmental issues being a prime example.…

Course management systems (CMSs) enable teachers to easily post assignments, lesson plans, announcements, and course documents. They also allow students to participate in online discussions and chats and turn in assignments online. Unfortunately, commercial systems are often expensive to purchase and maintain, removing them from the reach of many…

A number of descriptive studies of language classrooms have identified recasts as a frequent form of feedback used by teachers following learners' nontarget-like oral production. Some classroom-based researchers (e.g., Lyster, 1998) have suggested that recasts are less effective than other forms of feedback because of the ambiguity of their…

As the culturally and linguistically diverse population of the United States continues to increase dramatically, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and special education teachers in particular face the challenge of how best to assess and teach those students whose primary language is not English. The changing U.S. demographics are driving a need…

This document presents the proceedings of the 17th Annual Research Forum held June 29, 2012, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included herein are the following 25 action research papers: (1) "Reading and Writing": A Study Comparing the Strengths of Peer Review and Visible Author Writing Strategies (Elizabeth Behar); (2)…

This study investigated what forms of feedback, if any, helped students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learn grammar. Subjects, 100 Japanese college students of EFL, were given two types of tests on English dative ("to/for") alternation, then divided into five groups, according to the type of feedback they received: (1) group A was given…

This study examined the effectiveness of two factors in second language vocabulary teaching: (1) presence or absence of a text; and (2) use of a variety of explanation types. The study's context was three 9th grade and one 10th grade class of English-as-a-Second-Language students in Hong Kong. All classes were taught by different teachers. Their…

In training courses for writing tutors, an electronic mail forum is a particularly useful writing-to-learn activity because it gives tutors-in-training important experience with the collaborative intellectual processes at the heart of writing centers. In one particular class for tutors at Marquette University, Wisconsin, the assignment for the…

This study compared communication and interaction patterns in a college class in Dutch as a second language. Subjects were 16 native-English-speaking students. Two lessons, one taught using cooperative learning (CL) and one using teacher-centered instruction (TC), were videotaped and analyzed. The CL lesson consisted of a group reading game. The…

A project developed a program for improving deficient student-to-student listening skills. The targeted population consisted of 18 seventh-grade middle school students in a culturally diverse, lower middle class community in a near-western suburb of Chicago. The problem of deficient listening skills was evident through teacher observation and…

A study explored ways that three university-based and two middle-school-based teachers might begin to alter or interrupt discursive practices that have in the past permitted inequities in classroom talk about text to go unexamined and unchanged. A feminist theoretical frame guided the study's focus on gender as a lens for examining power…

A study investigated patterns of interaction in college classroom discourse involved in small group work. Specifically, it looked at two discourse sequences: Question-Answer-Comment (Q-A-C) and Question-Counter Question-Answer-Comment (Q-CQ-A-C). Instances of the latter are closely considered in the context in which they occur, and an attempt is…

Missouri's Frameworks for Curriculum Development in Mathematics acknowledges that teachers will bring the vision, ideals, and principles of the Show-Me Standards into their classrooms in exciting and innovative ways. The role of the frameworks is to provide districts with a "frame" for building curricula using the standards as a foundation. The…

A study investigated the effects on student teachers of peer responses offered through dialogue journals on English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teacher education. Subjects were nine students in a student teaching seminar, all involved in practicums in public high schools. Over 15 weeks, students wrote journal entries both on selected topics from…

Positing that an optimal way to make expectations and reality match may lie in helping university faculty learn about cultural traits and perceptions of their foreign students, a study used G. Hofstede's dimensions of national culture to assess cross-cultural differences in classroom interaction. The research sample was formed by 2 subsamples: 15…