A study of the relationships between students' questioning and learning styles is being conducted on data collected in two university semesters with a sample of 300 students. This report discusses the results of case studies looking in depth at four of the students. These were involved in further data collection through written and oral questions,…

Students studying a third-year e-commerce subject experienced face-to-face and online discussions as an important part of their learning experience. The quality of the students' experiences of learning through those discussions is investigated in this study. This study uses qualitative approaches to investigate the variation in the students'…

Teachers' failure to use the microcomputer-based laboratory (MBL) more widely may be a result of not recognizing its capacity to transform laboratory activities. This research aimed to increase understanding of how MBL activities designed to be consistent with a constructivist theory of learning support or constrain student construction of…

This study compares what we term information density in spoken versus written discourse by distinguishing between 2 broad classes of material in narrative texts: narrative information as conveyed through three types of propositional content--events, descriptions, and interpretations (Berman, 1997)--and ancillary information as conveyed by…

In this article, we extend previous work with respect to interrater reliability measure of computer-mediated conferencing and suggest coding categories relevant to problem-based learning. Calculating interrater reliability agreement by using a Transcript Reliability Cleaning Percentage (TRCP) approach is simple for academics with limited…

This critical discourse analysis focuses on neoliberal discursive representations of the community college mission. The community college's role in reproducing social inequality is explained as a neoliberal discursive project in which meanings of education are reconstituted to secure the interests of the powerful. As such, the community college…

This article examines the cultural history of slide projection technologies by focusing upon how such technologies acquire cultural meaning. The meanings acquired by these technologies emerge in areas as diverse as public and domestic entertainment, religion, science, and education. I identify three important discursive shifts impacting the…

This article analyses the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS), an agreement reached in 2003 between the South African Education Department and the major teacher organisations in the country by using discourse analysis. The IQMS was scheduled to be implemented in public schools in 2004. Three discursive tensions are identified and…

There is now widely recognized support for classroom-based formative teacher assessment of student performance as a pedagogically desirable approach to assessment which is capable of promoting learning. However, the highly localized and socially co-constructed nature of this type of assessment has raised conceptual and research issues that…

Culture can be thought of a set of shared practices, beliefs, and values that are transmitted across generations through language [Bruner, J. (1990). "Acts of meaning". Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press]. Teaching is one way that culture is transmitted, but forms of teaching vary across cultures and across activity settings within…

This article examines some of the ways graduate students engage in interactive writing in online university courses as a means of discussion. In particular, I present data from course transcripts that suggest that discursive interaction in an asynchronous, text-based, online course may be uniquely suited to fostering higher-order thinking and…

This article presents a qualitative case study of a seven-year-old Mexican American student and his family. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, we examine both the child's emergent ideas about language, as expressed in bilingual literature discussions, and his parents' ideological discourses about the use of a minority language in public schools.…

One of the advantages of having students work in pairs on language-related tasks is that teachers and researchers can listen to what the students say as they carry out their assigned tasks. What they say offers insights into the students' beliefs about the target language they are learning and using, and reflects the cognitive processes they use…

This article describes the discourses working-class students at a university in Britain have about learning. The discourses include ideas about who is a good student, education as an investment, and marking. Students incorporate, in part, both neo-liberal and neo-conservative economic and political views into their perceptions of who should…

This article investigates the effect of 2 language-in-use factors on the introduction and maintenance of referents in instructive discourse. These factors, implemented as conditions in an instructive production task, were the assumed visual identity for the reader of the objects or referents to be referred to in the instructions (visually same vs.…