Modeling is considered an important scientific practice, and modeling instruction has the potential to support conceptual change in students in physics. However, when students are not taught how to think about modeling, and how to develop and use models, the learning potential of modeling may be limited. This paper argues that the use and explicit…

Despite the effectiveness of dialogic instruction and whole-class discussion, it does not happen with regularity in the English Language Arts classroom. To examine this discrepancy, this study focused on the beliefs of teachers as they thought about discussion. To this end, the question addressed in this study was: How do high school English…

This paper explores student participation in dialogue in two sections of a master's level course in diversity and social justice. The researchers, including a student from the course and the instructor of the course, analyzed responses to a brief survey and transcripts from student focus groups. Three major themes relevant to students' attitudes…

For those who have taught in the traditional classroom at any level, proximity is understood as a best practice in managing classroom behaviors. The farther away the teacher is from the student the more likely the student is going to pay less attention and find themselves off task. Likewise, the inverse is true, the closer the teacher is to the…

This study focuses on how young people read and discuss two political documentary films, "Labor Day" and "Hillary: The Movie." We were specifically interested in the impact of the film viewing and discussion on participants' beliefs about the issues in the films, how they view evidence and expertise in the films, and how the…

Flourishing in today's global society requires citizens that are both intelligent consumers and producers of scientific understanding. Indeed, the modern world is facing ever-more complex problems that require innovative ways of thinking about, around, and with science. As numerous educational stakeholders have suggested, such skills and abilities…

In this exploratory case study, we consider how students in an undergraduate biochemistry class engaged in the process of argumentation within an inquiry-oriented learning environment to investigate a chemical mechanism in a particular part of the tricarboxylic acid cycle. Audio/video recordings of student groups during the mechanism discussion…

The Common Core State Standards shifted comprehension instruction to an analytic process commonly referred to as close reading. This multiple case study explored the academic discourse strategies of teachers and readers as they engaged in the practice of close reading. Framed by the Representation of Dialogue in a Joint Activity System, analysis…

Students with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are increasingly included in general education and are expected to access core content, including science. Development of science content knowledge, scientific literacy, and scientific thinking are areas emphasized in legislation as well as the National Science Education Standards as…

In this paper, we analyze the process of conceptualization experienced by students in Secondary School when involved in activities in a teaching and learning sequence on the concept of substance, considering the emergence of zones of the conceptual profile. The results point out that the approaches to different modes of thinking of substance…

Early Words Together at Two aims to help to improve the home learning environments of families of two-year-olds. It is designed for settings, including private and school nurseries and children's centres, who serve low-income families or any children with language and communication difficulties. Between January 2017 and March 2018, the programme…

Reading comprehension refers to elementary children's levels of understandings of written text. Building on Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956), children can understand text at various levels including the literal, inferential, application, and evaluation. When teachers build on the levels of reading…

"Accountable Talk" begins with students thinking out loud about a complex problem that requires collaboration: noticing something about the problem, questioning a surprising finding, or articulating, explaining, and reflecting upon their own reasoning. The teacher works to elicit a range of ideas, which may be incomplete. With teacher…

Although the work of teaching is often considered universally straightforward, professional classroom teaching requires more than a teacher's ability to complete a task; making students' ideas central to classroom discussions is crucial to student learning. The ability to engage students in classroom discussions focused on student ideas is not…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the use of policy debate as a frame for developing critical participatory literacy skills focused on student engagement with current events. Design/methodology/approach: Using dialogism as a frame for a discussion-based course (Bakhtin, 1982; Reznitskya, 2012) and self-study as a methodological…