Though literature discussions are a commonplace feature of English classrooms, we know little about how teachers learn to facilitate classroom talk. Research on methods courses reveals little about how, or if, teachers are prepared to enact the "high leverage" practice of literature discussions. This qualitative study examines an English…

Using videos from 63 teachers in grades 4-8 who were part of the Measures of Effective Teaching study, we identified five tendencies in the teaching of reading comprehension that can inform future work on the design and implementation of reading instruction. The five tendencies are: (1) Instruction is generally text-centric, but dominated by…

The issue of language, specifically access to English, has emerged as a key concern for both U.S. policy-makers and immigrant communities alike. Many of these debates are framed by neoliberal and human capital perspectives, which view English as a set of skills and linguistic capital that are inextricably tied to employment opportunities and…

An online curriculum about biological evolution was designed to promote increased student content knowledge and evidentiary reasoning. A feasibility study was conducted with 77 rural high school biology students who learned with the online biological evolution unit. Data sources included the Biological Evolution Assessment Measure (BEAM), an…

Student inability to explain concepts learnt in lessons using their own words academically and intellectually and their lack of interest in learning the subject are a cause of their incompetence in the development of their personality. This presents a challenge to lecturers that they should not rely entirely on conventional lectures and tutorials.…

The study investigated perceived ease of use and usefulness of Google Hangouts as an instructional/learning tool. Forty-two teacher education students at U.S and Japanese universities participated in an online cross-cultural activity using Google Hangouts and discussed cultural differences between the two countries and their teaching philosophies.…

The Division for Early Childhood/National Association for the Education of Young Children's (2009) joint position statement on inclusion stresses the importance of (a) developing practices that support young children of diverse abilities in inclusive learning environments, (b) being part of supportive school communities, and (c) engaging in…

Participating in reform-oriented mathematical discussion calls on teachers and students to listen to one another in new and different ways. However, listening is an understudied dimension of teaching and learning mathematics. In this analysis, we draw on a sociocultural perspective and a conceptual framing of three types of listening--evaluative,…

This study investigates how shared picture book storytelling within a peer-group setting could stimulate causal reasoning in children aged 4½ to 6 years. Twenty-eight children from preschool classes of three schools were allocated to one of six groups (four to five children per group). Each group participated in six storytelling sessions over a…

We investigated a 2.5-year professional development effort designed to support practicing science and mathematics teachers in understanding equity and enacting equitable practices. Our purpose was to inform the research base on effective equity professional development, toward the goal of better supporting science and mathematics teachers in…

Purpose: The Australian Dietary Guidelines support good health and disease prevention. Children with healthy eating habits established early in life have been shown to continue these habits into adulthood compared with those children who have poor eating habits in their younger years. The nutritional intake of many Australian children is not in…

This article reports on one teacher's year-long project seeking to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline through class dialogue around gang affiliations. The review of literature defines the school-to-prison pipeline and its connections to gang affiliation. The study engaged methods of qualitative action research with seven male participants…

This article examines four preservice teachers in India, who came together on a web-based forum to form a private group. The act of coming together enabled them to share narratives of self and teaching in a safe place termed as a knowledge community in the literature. Narrative threads from the conversations instantiate their awakening to the…

This paper focuses on the use of group discussions (GD), as a very open and flexible method of data generation, to learn about organisational characteristics of schools. In comparison to the more structured focus group method, the method of GD is less known; however, we demonstrate that it is a useful method to learn about how specific groups are…

Although over 80 percent of the 1.5 million students who enter community colleges each year indicate they intend to attain a bachelor's degree or higher, less than 40 percent earn any form of college credential within six years. This discussion starter is designed to help both higher education professionals and the average citizen work through how…