Although raters can be trained to evaluate the lexical qualities of student essays, the question remains as to what extent raters follow the "lexis" scale descriptors in the rating scale when evaluating or rate according to their own criteria. The current study examines the extent to which 27 trained university EFL raters take various lexical…

This essay analyzes and develops recent views about explanation in biology. Philosophers of biology have parted with the received deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation primarily by attempting to capture actual biological theorizing and practice. This includes an endorsement of different kinds of explanation (e.g., mathematical and…

Project-based learning (PBL), a learning-by-doing practice, has been used for enhancing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' language skills. However, the extent to which and how EFL teachers develop or improve Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) competencies while experiencing PBL remain unexplored. For this study an 18-week PBL…

The present study seeks to investigate the role of portfolios in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) writers' metacognition as well as their writing skill. Therefore, the participants were assigned to two groups (experimental and control). The students in both groups received a writing test, a researcher-made Metacognitive Writing Questionnaire…

This study examines the use of metadiscourse markers among 50 Malaysian and 50 Arab Pre-University students. The findings of this study indicated that there was a significant difference in the use of metadiscourse markers between Malaysian and Arab Pre-University students {?[superscript 2] (1, n = 100) = 7.17, p-value is 0.007} where the use of…

The present research offers an assessment of the online open source tools used in the L2 academic writing, teaching, and learning environment. As fairly little research has been conducted on how to best use online automated proofreaders for educational purposes, the objective of this study is to examine the potential of such online tools. Unlike…

This study investigates stakeholder perceptions of a communication studies department's diversity-focused learning outcome. Drawing from critical communication pedagogy and based on thematic analysis, we argue that the language of our department's diversity-focused learning outcome (similar to two of the National Communication Association's…

Scientific argumentation is one of the core practices for teachers to implement in science classrooms. We developed a computer-based formative assessment to support students' construction and revision of scientific arguments. The assessment is built upon automated scoring of students' arguments and provides feedback to students and teachers.…

Collaborative intellectual engagement is held in high regard in contemporary educational thought as a pedagogical practice of broad value to K-12 students. To what extent is this enthusiasm warranted? Is the practice uniformly productive, or does variability exist in the contexts in which collaboration is effective, the mechanisms involved, and…

Cultural consensus theory (CCT) is a data aggregation technique with many applications in the social and behavioral sciences. We describe the intuition and theory behind a set of CCT models for continuous type data using maximum likelihood inference methodology. We describe how bias parameters can be incorporated into these models. We introduce…

Much contemporary educational literature exhorts teachers, at all educational levels, to undertake continuous self-reflection on their teaching practices. However, at pre-service university level, many student teachers do not appear to understand the concept very deeply. Teacher educators and student teachers could benefit from knowing more about…

There is increasing expectation that schools should be able to use tablets for a range of instructional and assessment purposes. This article considers the comparability of student writing on tablets and laptops to ensure that writing assessment is conducted in a way that is fair to all students. Data were collected from a sample of 826 students…

In this reflective essay, Alberto Ledesma explores how being undocumented can produce a particular form of writer's block. He argues that there is a pattern of predictable silences and obfuscations inherent in all undocumented immigrant autobiographies that cannot be easily negotiated when undocumented students are asked to write about "their…

The focus of this essay is to examine how general education requirements and advising are connected in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. To do this, we begin with a brief description and history of general education requirements. We move next to a description of the advising system and general education requirements…

Setting out to teach Magna Carta to the full attainment range in Year 7, Mark King decided to choose a question that reflected real scholarly debates and also to ensure that pupils held enough knowledge in long-term memory to be able to think about that question meaningfully. As he gradually prepared his pupils to produce their own causation…