Explores the use of information-seeking strategies (i.e., overt, indirect, third party, testing, observing) among students in the college classroom. Notes that researchers did not find a significant relationship between student use of the observing information-seeking strategy and perceived instructor clarity, verbal immediacy, and verbal…

The primary goal of this study is to identify intra-textual linguistic variation in university classroom talk, applying corpus-based techniques to the analysis. First, based on the automatically identified vocabulary patterns in classroom talk a large number of class sessions are segmented into smaller units of analysis. Second, the co-occurring…

Phyllis Whitin was interested in the role of communications in developing mathematical understanding among children. She designed a problem-posing explorations system, which encouraged children to think, question, solve problems and discuss their ideas, strategies and solutions.

The critical literacy classroom is characterized by an emphasis on students' voices and on dialogue as a tool with which students reflect on and construct meanings from texts and discourses. Is it appropriate, however, to teach critical literacy in settings such as penal institutions where student voices are deliberately discouraged and silenced?…

As a long-term advocate for, and practitioner of, both Paulo Freire's theory of "liberatory education" and bell hooks's "engaged pedagogy," the author subscribes to their principles of encouraging freedom of thought through active dialogue and the dialogic in an attempt to empower students by making the classroom a space that opens up to radical…

This article provides an empirically based perspective on the contribution of conversation analysis (CA) and sociocultural theory to our understanding of learners' second language (L2) practices within what we call a strong socio-interactionist perspective. It explores the interactive (re)configuration of tasks in French second language…

This paper addresses the role of classroom discourse in supporting children's learning in Kenyan primary schools. The discourse strategies of 27 teachers teaching English, mathematics and science across the primary phase were intensively studied using discourse analysis and semi-structured interviews. A survey questionnaire (n = 359) was also used…

This article describes how students gain the confidence and skill to write personal essays by practicing their natural ability to tell their own stories orally in social situations. The author describes how her students' ability to chat with her and with one another at the start of each class became the cornerstone of their efforts to improve…

Providing examples is part of the daily routine that classroom teachers carry out in the course of their lessons, and yet we rarely examine how examples are produced and what kinds of work they do in the lively context of classroom interaction. The present study inquires into how instructional examples are portrayed in prior literature by…

In this article, Mary Doveston and Marian Keenaghan discuss their work with teachers and students in developing more effective and satisfying interpersonal relationships in the classroom. Their approach focuses on increasing the capacity of a classroom community to address and measure its progress in the social and emotional competencies which…

Research on personal epistemologies (Hofer & Pintrich, 2002) has mostly conceptualized them as stable beliefs or stages of development. On these views, researchers characterize individual students' epistemologies with single, coherent descriptions. Evidence of variability in student epistemologies, however, suggests the need for more complex…

The author shares a teaching method that promotes student engagement and involvement in class reading and discussion.

This article presents the results of research about students' and teachers' use of an interaction framework (THINK) to guide group communication about problem solving. Students who used the THINK framework demonstrated greater gains in problem-solving achievement than students who did not use the framework.

Instructional settings are developed for conceptual understanding of measurement for the fourth-grade students to engage limited English proficient (LEP) students in effectively communicating about mathematics. When naturally enticed to compare solutions, the students were motivated to explain their mathematical thinking and understand the…

This study aims to investigate the role of mediation in the learning process from a sociocultural perspective, activity theory in particular. This study was carried out in a primary English immersion school within the CCUEI Programs in Mainland China. Data were collected mainly through observations and interviews, which were then supplemented by…