Discusses classroom context and contexts for literacy learning, including physical aspects of a classroom, literacy materials, and the social and cultural ways of being for both teacher and students. Notes two different metaphors describing classroom contexts: classroom as work setting and classroom and learning community. (SR)

Reports on the uncontrolled, spontaneous talk generated by one self-contained class of 22 first graders as they worked together in groups to compose written assignments. Describes the types of task-specific, task-related, and unrelated conversation that the children engaged in, and the implications of such conversation for the early childhood…

States that the contrast of face-to-face communication with computer-mediated communication (CMC), either experimentally or experientially, may be a valuable way for teaching group dynamics and group decision making in educational settings. Suggests several ways to facilitate the use of CMC in single-session experimental and experiential…

Presents the results of a study analyzing students' gestures and scientific discourse by supporting three assertions about the relationship between laboratory experiences, gestures, and scientific discourse. Discusses the implications for laboratory experiments which students should attempt to explain while still in the lab rather than afterwards…

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…