The bilingual poetry and stories of Salvadoran writer Jorge Argueta have been an invaluable resource in this author's classroom. She has used poems from "Talking with Mother Earth" for homework and class analysis during a study of ecosystems, the story "Xochitl and the Flowers" to lead into persuasive writing, and "Bean Soup" to teach…

Once adapted to the context of the classroom, the tenets of successful counterinsurgency offer teachers a potent intellectual framework for conceptualizing teachers' efforts to build effective active learning communities together with their students. In this article, the author describes a counterinsurgency analogy that shares essential features…

This case study aimed to determine the nature of student interactions in small groups in an elementary classroom utilizing the Science Writing Heuristic approach. Fifth grade students were audio-recorded over four units of study while working in small groups to generate knowledge claims after conducting student-directed investigations. Analysis…

In his book, "A Whole New Mind", Daniel Pink champions the benefits of right-brained thinking: creativity, flexibility, empathy, and meaning. He stresses the need to not only be logical, but also aware of emotion; to not only be sequential, but also conceptual; and to not only be calculating, but also recognize value. The project described in this…

The wiki is an excellent tool for student collaboration and teacher assessment. Students' comfort with online social networking makes the wiki a perfect forum for students to coauthor works and to respond to each other's writing. In this article, the author discusses how to use a wiki to promote discussion and aid students with writing. He tested…

This study examines whether peer feedback can be a substitute for teacher feedback and which measures can be taken to improve its effectiveness. A pre-test post-test control group design examined the long-term learning effects of individual peer feedback and of collective teacher feedback on writing assignments in secondary education. Moreover, it…

In this article I present some findings of an action research study intended to find out to what extent a teacher-student partnership in writing assessment could promote high school students' autonomy. The study was conducted in a U.S. school. Two main action strategies in the assessment process were the use of symbols as the form of feedback…

In this study, 72 secondary English teachers from the Santa Ana Unified School District were randomly assigned to participate in the Pathway Project, a cognitive strategies approach to teaching interpretive reading and analytical writing, or to a control condition involving typical district training focusing on teaching content from the textbook.…

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to explore Native American students' experiences with writing in the first year of college at a public research university and two tribal colleges, exploring in particular what helped them succeed as writers. Individual interviews with students served as the main sources of data and included…

The development of scientifically literate citizens remains an important priority of science education; however, growing evidence of students' disenchantment with school science continues to challenge the realization of this aim. This triangulation mixed methods study investigated the learning experiences of 152 9th grade students as they…

In this essay, we examine the relationship between Whiteness theory and service learning, specifically through an examination of an intercultural communication course we taught. In our analysis of student-written assignments, we reveal how service learning provides a context for students to rehearse and affirm White privilege, despite the fact…

Plagiarism is an increasing problem in high schools and universities. To address the issue of how to teach students not to plagiarize, this study examined several pedagogical approaches for reducing plagiarism and the use of Turnitin, an online plagiarism detection software. The study found a significant difference between the control group and…

In this essay, the authors describe the results of a scholarship of teaching and learning project that conducted a qualitative study of the writing development of 21 student writers during the first year of college, tracking their progress in an English 101 course and following them as they moved into the core, transfer-level composition course.…

The views on epistemology by philosophers of science are developed through an historical lens. Enabling students to develop a scientific mindset is complicated by student's views on the Nature of Science. Students need to appreciate the history of science and to contrast different frameworks. In order to do this, students have to be able to follow…

This article describes an unlikely collaboration between a high school chemistry teacher and a high school English teacher who attempted to teach scientific concepts through poetry. Inspired by poet John Updike's (1960) "Cosmic Gall," these two teachers crafted writing tasks aimed at teaching science content through literary devices. The result…