This paper describes a new digital technology to support emotional self-awareness and empathy, called G.I.R.L.S (Girls Involved in Real Life Sharing). The system invited users to reflect actively upon and interact with a dialogue about how the story made them feel through the construction of pictorial narratives. In a pilot study with teenage…

This article presents a written assignment designed to achieve several goals. First, it offers students the chance to identify and examine the "pre-understandings" with which they enter the class, and to consider how these were formed. Once they have been elaborated, these "pre-understandings" inform the instructor and the student about biases and…

In this paper, we suggest that self-organized learning can be supported through emergent and informal Web technologies and propose that these technologies can be used to encourage similar practices in higher education. Self-organized learning aims at increasing individual control over instructional functions through a process that involves…

Background: Cole and Knowles (2000) suggest that making sense of experiences and understanding personal-professional connections are the essence of professional development. These researchers posit that through personal life-history exploration, teachers make known implicit theories, values, and beliefs that underpin teaching and being a teacher.…

This study examines narrative inquiry as a vehicle of empowerment for teacher-researchers living in a multicultural society. The study focuses on the personal, academic, and professional impact of narrative inquiry. In this qualitative study, which constitutes research on research, the participants were graduate students, all experienced teachers,…

Background: Research about sport pedagogy has recently emerged as a significant interest in student reflective practice within the PE teaching/learning system. This learning process is considered as a type of knowledge of co-construction in action. This epistemological assumption postulates that the "knowledge-in-action" is the result of an active…

In recent years, the Standards for Qualified Teacher Status in England have placed new emphasis on student-teachers' ability to become integrated into the "corporate life of the school" and to work with other professionals. Little research, however, has been carried out into how student-teachers perceive the social processes and…

Graduate students seeking certification as literacy specialists were asked to send monthly newsletters home with their students as a requirement for one of their courses. They were also asked to critically examine their newsletters, to discuss the impact, if any, it made on their relationships with parents, and to reflect on the experience. This…

An experienced physician-teacher shares her own experiences with loss in medicine and loss in her personal life. Through personal writings during her divorce, she exemplifies the healing effect writing can have during difficult transformations that occur in life. She shares her bias that physicians need to accept and own their emotions and can use…

How to teach flexible thinking and learning skills, particularly creativity and the skill of "learning to learn," is a key concern for CSCL in the context of the emerging Networked Society. The currently dominant paradigms for supporting pedagogical design within CSCL, including socio-cultural theory, are limited in the support that they can offer…

Design is at the heart of vocational training programmes. That is the reason why teaching design and training students to design are major concerns of engineering schools. Our participation in this training favours a particular approach: reflexive practice. The Reflexive pedagogy lays the emphasis on the metaphorical dimension of learning. It is…

The purpose of this study was to identify and examine the methods that professional dancers use to engage fully into their work as artists. Participants (N=15) were professional dancers from five European nationalities, (7 females; 8 males), currently performing for three major Scotland-based dance companies, including two professional free-lance…

This paper describes a teacher educator's self-study of work with her M.Ed. students at a private international university in Pakistan. This systematic inquiry highlights changes and improvements in teaching drawn from experiences of practice based on autobiographies. Analysis shows that improvement in teaching came from the author's learning…

This study explores the phenomenon of reflective learning through weblogging among pre-service teachers enrolled in an undergraduate technology course. Teacher trainees used weblogs to record their experiences in learning to use technology in teaching and learning. Although weblogging has emerged as a new form of mainstream communication among…

This study describes the relationship between the instructor's feedback and students' metacognitive processes in an online course on democracy and multiculturalism, which was taught as part of a teacher education program. 700 postings, written by 68 students, were content analyzed along with 66 postings by the instructor, using tools designed for…