This paper advocates a new perspective on languages. It begins by demonstrating that, the occasional disavowals of sociolinguists notwithstanding, the lens through which we in the 21st century, both specialists and laypeople, view languages is predominantly biological. It then suggests that this biological metaphor is conceptually unhelpful and…

Doctoral supervision is one of the primary factors affecting doctoral degree completion and attrition rates. Basing their work on the concept of cognitive apprenticeship, the authors investigated the role that doctoral supervisors should adopt in supporting their students, in light of feedback from the latter. A total of 533 doctoral students…

While the average teenager's conversation may seem inundated with the word "like", in the mathematics classroom, teenagers use it with purpose. Linguists study the word "like" to understand and categorize comparative statements. By overlapping linguistics and mathematics education within the frame of cognitive science, this study found that high…

Knoblauch and Brannon might suggest I pry loose the grip that ancient rhetorical tradition has on my modern classroom, but I'm not convinced I can so easily abandon the ancient rhetoricians. Learning to embrace the different, more creative, and less frequently acknowledged elements of this tradition may be the way for me to go instead. The ancient…

This essay seeks to establish a metaphor of the professional practice of teaching to the attributes and training of an offensive lineman in the game of American football. Effective classroom instruction does not rely exclusively on a rare set of talents but rather rests on the commitment to the work of teaching. Like the position of offensive…

In this column, the author uses the analogy of baseball to describe the lives of gifted children as a vehicle to think about similarities and differences. The author states that he has experienced how educators often gloss over the powerful and all-inclusive living conditions of high-ability students from financially impoverished backgrounds. In…

Idiom comprehension and production reflect a child's language competence. Research suggests that there is a positive relationship between children's reading comprehension skills and their idiom understanding. This study examines whether adult verbal scaffolding, in conjunction with the deliberate use of iconic gestures, can facilitate young…

This study examined the professional and personal transition undergone by eight experienced early childhood (EC) teachers after completing their graduate studies. The data were collected through interviews and online communication. Three main categories arose in the qualitative content analysis of the text: (1) personal process of change; (2)…

Noting that surprisingly little researcher attention has been directed toward teaming in early childhood education (ECE), the author conducted parallel case studies of two Head Start teacher teams in a single center. Drawing on interviews, extensive observational notes taken over the course of a school year, and teacher-generated metaphors, the…

Researchers believe that the way that students talk, specifically the language that they use, can offer a window into their reasoning processes. Yet the connection between what students are saying and what they are actually thinking can be ambiguous. We present the results of an exploratory interview study with 10 participants, designed to…

The diversification of settings in which higher education is delivered has resulted in a growing proportion of lecturers entering teaching from professional backgrounds. This is a challenging transition as lecturers are rarely given the space to consider the implications of this move on their identities and practice styles. Writing is recognised…

In an era of change, preparing our youth for an uncertain future is akin to building the airplane while it is in flight. Since we do not have the luxury of putting development on hold until we figure out the destination and the kind of plane we need to get there, we must fly anyway. This article employs an airplane analogy to illustrate the fact…

Collaborative multitouch applications have been designed to support social interaction and collaboration skills in people with mild autism. However, this kind of application generally is not designed specifically for people with severe autism. We have proposed a set of collaborative strategies to manipulate the elements in the interface aiming to…

This article introduces an alternative qualitative research tool: metaphor and drawing, as projections of personality features, to explore underlying concepts and values, thoughts and beliefs, fears and hesitations, aspirations and ambitions of the research subjects. These two projective tools are used to explore Greek state kindergarten head…

This paper considers how engaging with the principles of inclusive research can enhance research studies that set out to understand the experiences of student teachers on initial teacher education programmes. It does so by describing the methodological development of an on-going study of student teachers' perspectives on working with diverse…