The purpose of this article is to explore the use of picture walks in narrative and informational text as a method to encourage question generation. This article overviews the instructional benefits of having students generate their own questions before, during, and after reading. Featured are two classrooms where students pose questions through…

Research has strongly supported the role of classroom talk as a valuable teaching and learning tool. Carefully crafted teacher-student discussions that encourage broad student participation and knowledge building correlate with increased knowledge generation and higher academic achievement. To better understand classroom talk as an instructional…

Educators have long recognized the value and import of class journaling. Traditional approaches to journaling, however, only engage students in one mode of communicative expression while allowing them to procrastinate in writing their entries. Typical journals are also read exclusively by the instructor, which overlooks the opportunity for…

Are students offered possibilities to experience democratic practice in classrooms? Using an analysis of empirical data from classroom discussions in lower secondary school, this article identifies and explores two different types of classroom discussions which give students different positions: a conversation in which students are positioned as…

More knowledge of how the actual design of the laboratory work influence students' communication, is needed to design and implement physics laboratory work lessons. The aim with this quantitative research, conducted at a Swedish upper secondary school, was to explore how the design of the laboratory work affects students' communication. Twenty…

This study aligns with the recent calls in L2 Willingness to Communicate (WTC) research that mark a shift from viewing WTC as a static, trait-like variable to a construct that is dynamic, fluid, and situational. To accomplish this aim, this study collected both interactional and interview data to examine the situational changes of an ESL learner's…

Educating 21st century students to participate in reasoned, civil discourse is a moral imperative. A strong democracy depends upon the ability of its citizens to hear and consider opposing views, to view others as partners rather than adversaries, to cooperate and compromise when addressing important issues, to collaborate in order to accomplish…

In this article we present a reflection about the meaning attribution to the mathematical object "exponential function" that emerges from two mathematical modeling activities. The theoretical framework of the text contemplates considerations on Mathematical Modeling and elements of semiotics as theorized by Charles Sanders Peirce. The…

As recent scholarship emphasizes the value of social learning, this article describes a course redesign that sought to encourage such social learning. This multi-year course redesign includes altering a daily writing assignment to make it more specific and to make it a contribution to the learning of a study group. Data was collected and evaluated…

Circle time is a near universally used preschool activity; however, little research has explored its nature, content, and quality. This study examined activity types, teacher and child talk, child engagement, and classroom quality in a sample of public preschool classrooms in an urban, high-poverty school district. Results demonstrated that…

This article examines patterns of classroom organisation and interaction associated with the use of a particular type of digital technology -- the dynamic software GeoGebra -- in the lessons of an opportunity sample of three English secondary-school mathematics teachers. The concept of activity structure is used to organise this study, further…

This paper presents the results of an observational study developed on lessons taught by 128 teachers for a national teaching assessment program in Chile and whose practice was identified as outstanding. Specifically, we studied which strategies teachers used to promote students' self-regulation and autonomy during segments involving teacher-led…

As indicated in the introductory article, this special issue has attempted to represent and illustrate developments in theoretical, methodological, and empirical work related to the role of primary classroom dialogue in supporting children's self-regulation. The articles included report studies carried out in the United Kingdom and Chile (two…

This research is embedded in the context of tertiary education in Vietnam where the instruction giving stage is assessed. Drawing on a Conversation Analysis perspective, the study aims to reveal teachers' instructional patterns in three EFL classes of freshmen, thus not only maximizing the interactional structures that can enhance classroom…

Although learning scientific language is crucial for learning science, many primary school teachers lack the knowledge and skills to support this. The present case study reports on a primary school teacher who learned to use a repertoire of scaffolding strategies for stimulating pupils' scientific language development in inquiry-based science…