Asking surface-level questions is a common practice among educators. Delva Daines's (1986) pilot study indicated that 93 percent of the questions asked during lessons were at the literal level of comprehension and that it was very common for the teachers to restate, rephrase, or answer their own questions before the student had an opportunity to…

Content based language instruction can assist English as a second language (ESL) students to achieve better learning and teaching outcomes, however, it is primarily used to understand content, and may not help to develop critical analysis skills. Here we describe a pilot study that used a "Socratic" small-group discussion in addition to…

This paper describes how early childhood teachers' incorporation of pauses raises the quality of talk-in-interaction during play-based mathematics activities. Responses of both children and teachers are shown to be more contingent and expansive when conversations include protracted pauses than during interactions in which pauses are largely…

The theory of triarchic intelligence posits that, in addition to the widely acknowledged analytical reasoning abilities, creative and practical abilities should be included in the assessments of intellectual capacities and identification of gifted students. To find support for such an approach, the present study examined the psychometric…

While literacy interventions can be implemented in any grade, focusing on interventions in grades 3-8 is critical because it is often the best chance for students identified with earlier reading deficiencies to become ready for the literacy demands of postsecondary education and careers. States in both the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL)…

Every major measure of students' historical understanding since 1917 has demonstrated that students do not retain, understand, or enjoy their school experiences with history. Bruce Lesh believes that this is due to the way we teach history--lecture and memorization. Over the last fifteen years, Bruce has refined a method of teaching history that…

In 2001, the Australian Science Teachers Association's (ASTA's) Golden Jubilee year, a special commemorative combined issue of the then "Australian Science Teachers' Journal" (ASTJ) and "Investigating" (Australian Primary and Junior Science Journal), charted ASTA's beginnings and growth, from a "loose affiliation of four…

Individuals with autism often experience difficulty acquiring a functional intraverbal repertoire, despite demonstrating strong mand, tact, and listener skills. This learning problem may be related to the fact that the primary antecedent variable for most intraverbal behavior involves a type of multiple control identified as a verbal conditional…

What happens when speakers try to "dodge" a question they would rather not answer by answering a different question? In 4 studies, we show that listeners can fail to detect dodges when speakers answer similar--but objectively incorrect--questions (the "artful dodge"), a detection failure that goes hand-in-hand with a failure to rate dodgers more…

Survey designers have long assumed that respondents who disagree with a negative question ("This policy is bad.": "Yes" or "No"; 2-point scale) will agree with an equivalent positive question ("This policy is good.": "Yes" or "No"; 2-point scale). However, experimental evidence has proven otherwise: Respondents are more likely to disagree with…

"You're hired!" Those two words are easy to say, but it's not always easy to find the right employee. Success hinges on hiring interviews--and they require quite a bit of training to get right. Much of the work in identifying the best people for open positions falls to line-of-business managers. In this article, Verizon Wireless, Umpqua Bank,…

The present study builds on research that indicates that teachers play a key role in promoting those interactional behaviours that challenge children's thinking and scaffold their learning. It does this by seeking to determine whether teachers who implement cooperative learning and receive training in explicit strategic questioning strategies…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to report on findings related to the use of a large group intervention method known as The World Cafe. Design/methodology/approach: The intervention method and its philosophical genesis are described along with lessons learned from observation, personal use, and interviews with cafe participants. Findings: While…

In view of the current theoretical and empirical support for a student-generated questions approach to learning along with the advantageous features of network technology, several online student question-generation learning systems with a peer-assessment component have been developed. Despite this, all existing systems are limited in terms of the…

The kinds of questions teachers ask may thwart or promote learner high-order thinking; teachers themselves must have expertise in questioning skills to promote higher order cognition among learners. Drawing on experiential knowledge of assessment, and as an English-teaching professional development programme (PDP) facilitator, I demonstrate that…