Evaluates the effect of an experimental introductory undergraduate course on female students' confidence and interest in geoscience and their attitudes toward classroom participation and praxis. Concludes that students in the course showed no significant change in confidence, modest gains in interest, and highly significant improvements in…

Explores the potential for mathematics instruction of four reading strategies grounded in transactional reading theory. Illustrates how encouraging mathematics students to talk, write, draw, and enact texts can provide them with concrete ways to construct and negotiate interpretations of what they read. Contains 41 references. (Author/ASK)

Reviews literature on recent developments in teacher-student interaction and language learning. Based on a sociocultural perspective of language and learning, draws from three types of classrooms: first language, second language, and foreign language. Attention is given to studies that investigate the specific means used in teacher-student…

Argues that the authenticity of texts in the English language classroom may need to be sacrificed to achieve authentic responses in students. Shows how simple tasks can be devised that exhibit a high degree of authenticity both in terms of task and learner response.(Author/VWL)

Studies relationships between teacher epistemology, classroom interactions, and related student epistemologies and identities. Results indicate that classroom discourse, orchestrated by the teacher, likely mediates many of the associations between teacher and student epistemologies documented here. (Contains 36 references and an appendix.) (GCP)

Explores the need to implement the World Englishes (WE) perspective into international teaching assistant (ITA) programs. While traditional ITA programs typically view ITA speech as deficient and in need of improvement, the WE perspective asserts that intelligibility is dependent upon interaction between speaker and listener, thereby rendering…

This paper examines the way in which a cohort of first year Chemistry students interpreted commonly used assessment task verbs and compared these responses with their lecturers' usage of these terms. The results of the research suggest that the gap between the understandings held by students new to university, and those held by lecturers, is of…

This article uses conversation analysis (CA) to describe the structural properties of zones of interactional transition (ZITs) or talk that occurs at the boundaries of different classroom (and perhaps other institutionally oriented) speech exchange systems. Two types of ZIT are analyzed in detail. Counter question sequences (Markee, 1995) are…

This article brings to our attention the intricacies and possibilities of teaching and learning in post-apartheid public schools of South Africa. My argument moves from the premise that if the South African school system is meant to build a democratic nation, then it must reflect the democratic objectives of the nation. Research (e.g. Chisholm,…

This paper traces the sophisticated negotiations to re-inscribe the authority of Nature when a school science experiment fails during the enactment of a highly rated science curriculum unit. Drawing on transcriptions from classroom videotapes, we identify and describe four primary patterns of interaction that characterize this process, arguing…

Since the 1920s, textbook critics have maintained that textbooks should offer a homogenous editorial approach, including an acknowledgment of a mix of author opinion and scholarly research. Several researchers indicated that some textbooks are not homogenous. The purpose of this quantitative content analysis study was to examine whether…

This single case study examined a Deaf teacher's behaviors and beliefs that reflect her expectations of her deaf students. Primary modes of communication used were American Sign Language and written English. Data were collected via videotaped observations and interviews. Analysis was done by coding utterances of the participants using a deductive…

In this study I rely on sociocultural views of learning and teaching to describe how fifth- sixth-grade students in a Fostering a Community of Learners (FCL) classroom gradually adopted scientific ideas and language in a socially complex classroom. Students practiced talking science together, using everyday, scientific, and hybrid discourses as…

In this paper we question key terms which appear frequently in discussions of language teaching and learning: "language" and "heritage". The paper draws on empirical data from one of four linked case studies in a larger project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), "Investigating Multilingualism in…

This paper explores difficulties in talking about "race" and difference in a post-apartheid university classroom. The data come from classroom-based research conducted in a first-year undergraduate English Studies course at a historically "white" and Afrikaans university in South Africa. Drawing on poststructuralist ideas on…