This study investigated how a collaborative mentoring program influenced beginning science teachers' inquiry-based teaching and their reflection on practice. The one-year program consisted of five one-on-one mentoring meetings, weekly science education seminars, weekly mentoring group discussions, and self-evaluation activities. The participants…

Learning to argue is prerequisite to solving complex problems in groups, especially when they are multidisciplinary and collaborate online. Environments for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) can be designed to facilitate argumentative knowledge construction. This study investigates how argumentative knowledge construction in…

Lesson Study is a collaborative, cyclical and continuing professional development process, aiming at improving a lesson through critical reflection. This research is based on three cycles of Lesson Study conducted during a four-week workshop in Japan for 10 South African mathematics and science educators. A sub-group developed and refined a high…

Informal "teacher talk" about students is ubiquitous, but it remains largely unexamined. This study critically examines casual, everyday teacher discourse about students perceived to be racially or culturally "different." Data were collected through participants' journal entries, group discussion, and interviews. Findings…

The purpose of this study was to explore how critical and reflective thinking about race and culture evolved and manifested in online threaded discussions among pre-service teachers during a required Multicultural Education course. Because of the ubiquitous presence of computer-mediated forms of communication, research has increased in recent…

This article outlines an approach to class advising which draws on research-based techniques to elicit feedback and discussion from students. The purpose of using this method is to enhance communication, increase student engagement, and improve the relationship between the faculty and the class of students.

Science education reform calls for learners to be engaged in hand-on, minds-on activities related to science. As a part of this reform effort, learners are encouraged to use writing as a means of documenting their work and developing their understandings. This qualitative case study employed the Conceptual Change Perspective and Sociocultural…

This dissertation examines the participation of one Chinese teacher and five 13 to 15 year-old Chinese heritage students in a classroom in a Chinese community school during group discussions about narrative texts. In this study, the teacher used Collaborative Reasoning (CR) (Anderson, et al., 2001) to help the Chinese heritage students extend…

This paper describes the "practice architectures"; and "ecologies of practice" of LS (lesson study) in an Indonesian private elementary school. It aims at drawing on LS as a form of professional learning from the perspective of contemporary practice theory (Kemmis, Wilkinson, Hardy, & Edwards-Groves, 2009; Kemmis, 2009a,…

This article examines the experiences of seven teacher educators who met monthly over one academic year to engage in a collaborative self-study focused on exploring the text, "Developing a Pedagogy of Teacher Education: Understanding Teaching and Learning about Teaching." Through reflective discussion focused on relating the text to our…

In this essay, the author explores the notion that the focus of learning in classrooms and schools extends beyond the learning of individuals to create a collective body of knowledge that is larger than what any one person knows. This idea was examined in a collaboration between Project Zero researchers and educators from the municipal preschools…

Increasing evidence shows that punitive discipline is ineffective and detrimental. Using empowerment theory and the opportunity-to-learn conceptual framework, this literature review seeks to broaden school personnel's knowledge of alternative discipline interventions. Searching ERIC and JSTOR databases, we looked for English language, North…

Findings are reported from a year-long evaluation of the effectiveness of the SPRinG programme relative to a control group. SPRinG aimed to address the wide gap between the potential of group interaction to promote learning and its limited use in schools. The project involved working with teachers to develop strategies for enhancing pupil group…

Participants' performances of outdoor skills and leadership are interpreted for environmental learning using Ingold's (2000) notion of an "education of attention": the fine-tuning of their perception. The actual tasks and activities of adventure travel have until recently gone largely unquestioned; but the relationship between skills and…

The purpose of this paper was to report on the findings of a study examining students' online interaction patterns. The context of the study was a graduate online class delivered via Blackboard[R]. The primary data for the study came from students' discussion board postings, online learning journals, and course grades. Various data analysis…