This research examined concerns that primary teachers had in challenging gifted pupils in a normal classroom setting. Research findings in England indicated that children with high ability do not always attain highly, and within the context of primary science education underachievement was often linked to lack of appropriate challenge. The…

Previous research into teachers' questions has focused on what types of questions are more conducive for developing students' communicative language use. In this regard, "display questions," whose answers the teacher already knows, are considered less effective because they limit opportunities for students to use genuine language use (Long & Sato,…

In this article, the author relates how his visits to classrooms across America to speak to children about writing and illustrating books have left him impressed by the creative ways in which educators manage scant resources to motivate students and to develop exciting lessons. He shares six things that he has learned from these visits about how…

As the Hispanic population of the United States continues to increase dramatically, school professionals may misinterpret and may perceive culturally different classroom discourse skills as indicative of language learning disabilities. A possible misunderstanding of pragmatic behaviors of culturally and linguistically diverse Hispanic students may…

This article describes a participatory action research project undertaken as a partnership between student, teacher and nurse co-researchers at a Canadian alternative high school. A key purpose of this research was to explore and interpret the meaning of this partnership for mental health promoting nursing practices with adolescents. Following a…

This study sought to identify variables related to higher levels of elementary and secondary school teacher use of wait-time I and whether knowledge and skill can be increased by focused staff development. Wait-time I is the time a teacher pauses after asking a question before acknowledging a student's response. The study used research on QUILT…

This paper begins with "insider" voices from disciplines that students in a writing program rarely encounter. As background, the paper muses on the theoretical and pedagogical potential of studying and understanding the rhetoric of inquiry in other disciplines as a way of arriving at a social constructionist view of knowledge. The paper…

Graduate surveys are a good way for home study schools to determine whether graduates are getting jobs in their field of training and whether courses are meeting student expectations. Although telephone surveys are more costly and time-consuming than mail surveys, they are usually more accurate. Survey response rates can be boosted to 50-60% by…

This book presents successful classroom practices for teaching thinking skills with children and adolescents. An introduction discusses the basic importance of cognitive processes to academic success and the importance of thinking skills programs for all students. Four fundamental concepts that underlie recent changes in curriculum and…

Among the strategies used by the adult to engage the child in a linguistic interaction, those involving questioning occupy a central position. One of the parameters usually taken into account to differentiate the type of questions directed to the child is the opposition between closed (i.e., yes/no) and open-ended questions. The relevance of that…

A study investigates the roles and frames of reference of a family planning counselor as she offers information and counsel to her client and examines the implications for the training of counselors. First, the ideology of family planning counseling is discussed, focusing on the counselor's need to find an appropriate place on the counseling…

The influence of discourse and pragmatic transfer in cross-cultural encounters has received little consideration in studies on the construct validity of performance tests. With the current emphasis on direct assessment of speaking proficiency following the protocol of the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), the potential importance of cross-cultural…

Traditional elementary statistics instruction for non-majors has focused on computation. Rarely have students had an opportunity to interact with real data sets or to use questioning to drive data analysis, common activities among professional statisticians. Inclusion of data gathering and analysis into whole class and small group activities…

Reading is an area of the curriculum that contains many opportunities for students to develop self-esteem. Three common procedures used in the classroom, however, are likely to threaten students' self-esteem: required oral reading; team selection and the aspect of competing and declaring winners and losers; and question and answer procedures.…

This paper clarifies important distinctions in item writing and item scoring and considers the implications of these distinctions for developing guidelines related to test construction for training teachers. The terminology used to describe and classify paper and pencil test questions frequently confuses two distinct features of questions:…