Imagination is what the U.S. was built on and what it requires to achieve and maintain its status in the future. In this article, the author says that there is a failure of imagination in education in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era. Scores on tests do not translate into creativity or imagination; nor do such tests and the curriculum that…

This study examined the relationship of different measures of syntactic complexity with rated quality for two genres of text produced by middle school students. It was hypothesized that different measures would be associated with distinct aspects of syntactic complexity; words per clause with greater use of structures more typical of expository…

This thesis uses empirical research in order to understand effective strategies for successfully teaching of the expository essay to ninth grade students. Five focal areas are studied for targeted intervention in order to discover best practices for maximizing student learning of the essay format. The study hypothesizes that in order for ninth…

This study analyzes the procedural explanations written by remedial college mathematics students. Relevant literatures suggest that six communication activities might be key in effective procedural explanations in mathematics writing: (a) orienting the learner, (b) providing kernels or definitions of concepts and procedures, (c) using exemplars or…

This article analyses the role of educational opportunity in a time of globalisation, a new economy and life in a multicultural society, and gives an epistemological and semantic account of the concept "intercultural education", distinguishing it from multicultural and transcultural education. Starting with a historic overview of various…

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effects of listening to expository text on first graders' listening comprehension and book choice. The participants for this study included 77 first grade students from four heterogeneous classes at a suburban elementary school in the New York City metropolitan area. During the pretest and…

The concept of dialogue is often examined apart from the social and historical context in which it is embedded. This paper identifies how dialogue between a superior and a subordinate generates a reorganisation of situated knowledge in the education and training of nurse teachers. We created an analytic method of supervisory discourse founded on…

Student-centered tasks, such as having students select vocabulary to be learned, offer one way of supporting both content area learning and independent word learning. The underlying foundation of these tasks is the vocabulary terms and phrases that students personally deem important for understanding what is read. With this in mind, the authors…

This study investigated the effects of an expository writing strategy implemented using the Self-Regulated Strategy Development model on the writing skills of four, 4th- and 5th-grade students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Instruction had a pronounced positive effect on students' writing. Student essays were longer and more…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of questioning "during" a read-aloud and questioning "after" a read-aloud, using science-related informational tradebooks with first-and second-graders. Three thematically-related tradebooks were used, each portraying a scientist involved in authentic investigation. Students in two first/second…

"Voice" is widely considered to be a feature of effective writing. It's no surprise, then, that voice criteria frequently appear on rubrics used to score student essays in large-scale writing assessments. However, composition theorists hold vastly different views regarding voice and how it should be applied in the evaluation of student writing, if…

Research on early adolescence reveals significant declines in intrinsic motivation for reading and points out the need for metacognitive strategy use among middle school students. Research indicates that explicit instruction involving motivation and metacognitive support for reading strategy use in the context of a discipline is an efficient and…

How has the teaching of writing changed in the 21st century? In this innovative guide, real teachers share their stories, successful practices, and vivid examples of their students' creative and expository writing from online and multimedia projects, such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, electronic poetry, and more. The book also addresses assessment:…