Achievement goals are the reasons for pursuing competence-related tasks. Much prior work has shown that they can affect student motivation, learning, and performance outcomes. They are typically measured in classroom settings vis-à-vis self-report surveys about students' goals or the perceived goal structure of the class. Less work has measured…

In this article we report on a study of children's attention to numerical content in picture books. Specific research questions are 1) how the content in a designed picture book directs children's attention to numbers, and 2) what kind of numerical reasoning the book reading entails. To answer these questions, we conducted an educational design…

This qualitative research study investigates dialogic discourse (i.e., give-and-take communication where students actively construct meaning) aimed at supporting mathematical meaning making in linguistically diverse elementary classrooms. For this study, linguistically diverse classrooms refer to classrooms where Spanish is the home language of…

This study explores the relationship between students' perceptions and teachers' discourse practices in mathematics classrooms. It reframes the sequence of Initiate-Response-Follow-up (IRF) with a renewed discourse structure that focuses on teachers' follow-up actions including listening, thoughtful questioning, and effective talk moves.…

Recent reforms in science education emphasize having students develop and refine core disciplinary ideas through participation in science knowledge--building practices. Supporting students' meaningful participation in these practices is challenging, in part because our understanding of how this kind of participation develops is underexplored. This…

In this feasibility study, we present a newly developed observational system, Optimizing Learning Opportunities for Students (OLOS). OLOS is designed to elucidate the learning opportunities afforded to individual children within early childhood classrooms and as they transition to formal schooling (kindergarten through third grade). OLOS records…

Many classroom units and lessons are now organized around engaging students in developing claims and evidence. An aspect of teachers' work that is understudied is how teachers manage the complexity inherent in navigating between claims and empirical data. In other words, what do teachers do when students do not see what they are "supposed…

In this brief forum article, the author suggests studying the instructor-student relationship as a superior-subordinate relationship offers an alternative way to view how student learning occurs in the college classroom, and can provide instructional communication researchers with the opportunity to explore how structural and institutional…

Communication is, by its nature, inherently interdisciplinary. In no other subfield of the discipline is this truer than instructional communication. To that end, instructional communication scholars contribute to the understanding of classroom dynamics and effective methods for facilitating learning. A close examination of that work highlights…

"Communication Education's" commitment to publishing rigorous instructional communication research with a diversity of methods is clear in its publication of quantitative, qualitative, and critical articles (Witt, 2012). Here, Andrea Meluch argues that the trends in the most recent research published within this journal indicate a lack…

Educational encounters of the future (and increasingly, of the present) will involve a complex collaboration of human and machine intelligences and agents, partnering to enhance learning and growth. Increasingly, "students and instructors are not only talking 'through' machines, but also [talking] 'to them', and 'within them'" (Edwards…

Paul Witt challenges every reader to make a decision in response to the question: "Will the profession follow these recommendations presented in this forum?" Will "quick and dirty" survey methods be exchanged for more complex research designs?" He cautions readers to think first before replying, warning that this is a…

VoiceThread holds potential to provide students who rarely speak in class a means to create visually-based digital conversations. In light of this, pedagogical affordances of the tool are considered, along with efficacy behind VoiceThread development within English as a Foreign Language contexts. Instructional strategies, supported by examples,…

This article explores the translanguaging practices of five middle-school emergent bilinguals in mathematics. Situated in a Spanish-English dual language school in Miami, Florida, this ethnographic case study utilized student shadowing as the principal method of data collection. Data sources included six months of classroom observations, students'…

This paper presents a theoretical discussion about space-time as a curricular element which the student learns certain dynamics and positions to knowledge. The interactions to student's whit curriculars elements are necessary to build knowledge, like other curricular elements, the perspective of use of this element is important to type of learning…