This study characterized students' online collaborative discourse from a theory-building perspective and examined its relation to epistemic and conceptual understanding. Fifty-two fifth graders' Knowledge Forum discussions on electricity were analysed. Discourse moves were coded within the inquiry threads, and two key epistemic patterns were…

The classrooms of the twenty-first century will require faculty to redefine and infuse active learning strategies to the online platform. The discussion forum can be much more. It can serve not only as a great tool to keep students engaged and connected to the online classroom but also as a space for students to be creative and develop deep…

Given the current interest in organizing teacher education around core instructional practices that help preservice teachers enact ambitious aspects of teaching like leading classroom discussions, this article investigates an example from the experience of a preservice teacher as she works on orienting students to each other's ideas. Resulting…

Explanatory pictures and models are frequently used in teaching and learning situations. However, it seems to be simply assumed that they are always beneficial. In this article results from an investigation with 16 Swedish pupils aged 7-9 year are presented based on an analysis that has examined how well this assumption holds up. Concepts from…

Reader response theory provides the framework for the present study that explored literary elements and cultural responses of fifth-grade students to two modified versions of a cross-cultural text, "Homesick: My Own Story" by Jean Fritz. One group of students read the first chapter of the book and another group read a modified basal…

This paper reports on a study of parental involvement in children's mathematics learning in the context of a series of workshops carried out in four primary schools in the United Kingdom. Previous research suggests that, while there are high correlations between parental involvement and positive student outcomes, it can be difficult to raise…

To promote graduate students' active learning, deep reading of high quality papers was done by graduate students enrolled in biochemistry and microbiology pharmacy curriculum offered by college of life science, Jiangxi Normal University from 2013 to 2015. The number of graduate students, who participated in the course in 2013, 2014, and 2015 were…

This study examines student teachers' collaborative learning by focusing on socio-cognitive and socio-emotional monitoring processes during more and less active script discussions as well as the near transfer of monitoring activities in the subsequent task work. The participants of this study were teacher education students whose collaborative…

In this study we report the findings of a two-year professional development study using scaffolded lesson-study to encourage and support four teachers' desire to use discussion with increased frequency and quality. We joined a collaborative community of practice made up of one university researcher, two classroom teachers, and a political science…

A pilot study was conducted on a multimodal educational tool, Peruvian Food Chain Jenga (PFCJ), with 5th-grade students (N = 54) at a public charter school. The goal was to compare the effectiveness of the multimodal tool to a more traditional presentation of the same materials (food chain) using an experimental/control design. Data collection…

We adopted Facebook as part of a large enrollment science discussion class in a bid to exploit students' time on this social networking site and tested the effectiveness of this "co-option" strategy of creating education-related activity on Facebook for our students. We used a "Facebook Group" to create an online avenue for…

In their transition to college, students often struggle to identify and make connections between the main arguments, evidence, and empirical findings of articles from academic journals commonly assigned on political science syllabi. Which active learning techniques are most effective for teaching students to recognize and evaluate social science…

The present study examined the social dynamics of interpersonal immediacy, a manifestation of social support, during collaborative small-group discussions. The temporal sequence of three forms of immediacy behaviors identified from 24 discussions in two fifth-grade classrooms were analyzed using statistical discourse analysis. The preliminary…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate and compare the effects of group-to-whole student-led oral discussion and small-group collaborative drafting as pre-writing tasks on Iranian intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' writing performance. Additionally, the difference between the writing components was examined.…

This study explored whether Personal and Social Development (PSD) teachers, school-based counsellors, and students in Maltese secondary schools perceived processing experiences as empowering to seek counselling, if and when needed. The study investigated if processing techniques within PSD methodology helped develop self-awareness. The research…