Research into the teaching and assessment of student writing shows that many students find academic writing a challenge to learn, with legal writing no exception. Improving the availability and quality of timely formative feedback is an important aim. However, the time-consuming nature of assessing writing makes it impractical for instructors to…

This essay describes an adaptable, multimodal assignment in which students create a comic in lieu of a traditional essay or exam. I outline the theoretical and practical value of this assignment and provide a detailed description of its implementation in two different literature courses: an introduction to the major course and a course on…

The OECD's PISA programme has been portrayed as central to the emergence of a regime of global educational governance and the subsequent convergence of policies towards a standardised model. Whilst there is an extensive literature describing PISA's impact on education policies, there is a paucity of analysis of how PISA data is presented to the…

This paper presents LISSA ("Learning dashboard for Insights and Support during Study Advice"), a learning analytics dashboard designed, developed, and evaluated in collaboration with study advisers. The overall objective is to facilitate communication between study advisers and students by visualizing grade data that is commonly…

With Common Core State Standards (CCSS), all students are held to the same high expectations, including students learning English and other learners who may have academic difficulties. Many students learning English have trouble writing and need effective writing strategies to meet the demands the standards present. Ten fourth and fifth grade…

Do your students need more opportunities do develop number sense and reasoning? Are you looking to get your students energized and talking about mathematics? Have you wondered how practical, replicable, and engaging activities would complement your mathematics instruction? This guide answers the question "What could I do differently?" by…

One focus of 21st century science education is teaching students authentic disciplinary practices. Scientific argumentation is one such practice, and evidence suggests it is not only a key skill, but also a facilitator of high-level comprehension. Science teachers need assistance teaching and incorporating argumentation into their work. In this…

Argumentation is considered crucial in numerous disciplines. However, it is unclear whether argumentation is understood in comparable ways across disciplines. This study examined how students perceive argumentation in science and language lessons, and investigated beliefs about the relevance of discourse and facts. Data from 3,258 high school…

Nowadays, there is still a widely held view that the Chinese and Western modes of thought are quite distinct from each other. In particular, the Chinese mode of thought derived from Confucianism is considered as comparatively less rational than the Western one. In this article, I first argue that although the analogical mode of argumentation,…

Background: College- and career-ready standards cite the "special place of argument writing" in preparing students to be college students, professionals, and engaged citizens in an information-rich society (NGA, 2010). To support these critical skills, the National Writing Project (NWP) developed the College, Career, and Community…

Rapid advancements in computing have enabled automatic analyses of written texts created in educational settings. The purpose of this symposium is to survey several applications of computerized text analyses used in the research and development of productive learning environments. Four featured research projects have developed or been working on:…

Many students who have experienced complex trauma receive special education services related to emotional and behavioral disorders at residential treatment facilities (RTFs) as they undergo therapy. One academic skill in which students with emotional and behavioral disorders often struggle is writing. The current multi-probe, multiple-baseline,…

Most of the research on argumentation in science education has documented the myriad flaws in students' argumentation, and the difficulties teachers have organising productive arguments in the classroom. We apply a sociocultural framework to argue that productive argumentation emerges from a classroom culture in which its practice meaningfully…

This paper compares three types of dialogues as reflective tools in placement learning: supervisory dialogues (mentor to student-teacher), peer dialogues (student teacher to student teacher) and self-dialogues (student teachers to themselves). Forty-four Dutch student teachers utilised the procedure of guided reflection to talk about their…

The aim of this study was to examine the quality of the written argument of pre-service science teachers on certain socio-scientific issues (SSI) and their opinions about the process of something. The study group consisted of 26 pre-service science teachers (18 females and 8 males) studying in their 3rd year of a state university. The purposeful…