As the number of students pursuing asynchronous education and learning experiences in online platforms and forums continues to grow, it is increasingly important to pause and reflect on the nature of language commonly--and often reflexively--used in these online spaces. Because online, asynchronous classroom discussion forums constitute the…

We contrast the centrality of free and full communication, especially as it occurs in classrooms, for John Dewey's democratic vision of the Great Community with the technologically mediated classroom communication characteristic of the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on Google's dominance of educational communication in particular. Drawing on Shoshana…

Despite support for the importance of early language environments, little is known about the naturally occurring experiences children have in preschool settings. The current study sample included 91 children (M[subscript age] = 4.72 years; 56% male; 67% White) from 23 preschool classrooms and nearly 1500 h of language environment data from three…

Online learning provides a variety of benefits to the educational experience, including accessibility and flexibility, but is often limited in terms of peer-to-peer interactions and relationship development. Using media richness theory as a guiding framework, this study extended prior research to determine the impact of using richer channels in a…

Mathematics educators have moved past the days of students sitting quietly in mathematics classrooms, listening to their teachers while procedures are demonstrated at the board. While this is certainly not true everywhere, the evidence to move away from traditional lectures is clear. Rather than sitting and just listening, students must actively…

The common reproach: "think before you speak!," epitomises an educational paradigm in which speech is only the act of transmission finalised ideas. In his inspiring short essay "On the Gradual Formation of Thoughts During Speech" from 1805, the German writer Heinrich von Kleist challenged this approach when he described his…

Turning educational ideas into meaningful learning requires planning for uncertainty. This article presents Bakhtin's key concept of "eventness" as an essential aspect of defining dialogic space. To Bakhtin an event is something happening here and now, with a degree of open-ended uncertainty tied to what will happen next. Acknowledging…

This article argues that provisional language is important for creating a dialogic space between speakers, where ideas are open for discussion; where participants respect each other's viewpoints; and where the goal is to encourage and explore multiple perspectives. Whilst much of the research on children's talk in the classroom focuses on the…

What is the role of teachers in constructing loving dialogic space that is liminal in nature? How can curricular boundary objects catalyze new dialogic spaces connecting people in different social locations? Illuminating these questions, Ms. Thompson opened new doors for elementary students in an urban Reformed Christian school community, inviting…

Purpose: This study explores prospective classroom teacher (PCT) question types and their role in initiating productive student-led talk. Design/Approach/Methods: This study is a naturalistic inquiry focusing on the structure, nature, and productivity of PCT questions using data collected from 24 fourth-grade (exit-level) PCTs. Video-based data…

The paper reports qualitative findings from a study about how science teachers enacted discursive purposes and talk moves to support the students' experiments. Science teachers may have difficulties assisting students in designing and conducting valid and reliable experiments as the core epistemic practice of science teaching and learning. It is…

The study aims to investigate how teacher candidates with different ideologies differ in their use of dialogic learning principles in the dialogic teaching. The design of the study is a multiple case study in qualitative research methods. The educational ideologies of teacher candidates identify the cases of the study. The data were derived from…

This paper imagines oracy education as a reaching-out for connection with the irreducible socialities of black study. In the wake of imperialist functions of literacy, classroom talk has been left to defend its value against traditionalist views which rebuke, as one UK education minister put it, "idle chatter in class." We argue that…

The current special issue is dedicated to studies exploring social interaction in second language educational environments that feature technology. In this introduction article, we contextualize the empirical studies included here with respect to the changing role of technology in education and situate them in the research tradition of multimodal…

The present study examines the direct and indirect relationships between classroom environment (CE), L2 (second/foreign language) learner emotions (i.e. enjoyment, anxiety and boredom), and their willingness to communicate (WTC) in classes for English as a foreign language (EFL). Participants were 2,268 university students in China. Pearson…