Prejudice and discrimination are ugly cousins, haunting humankind like the evil fairy who appears unbidden to curse the young princess. Is education the good fairy, bestowing tools to overcome this curse? A course the author taught in winter 2006 at the University of California, Irvine--one of the most ethnically diverse campuses in the United…

This article discusses a reading instruction applicable to widely diverse classrooms, because it weaves together dynamic strands from three approaches to teaching reading: literature circle method, reciprocal teaching, and modern literary theories. The author presents three stages to achieve reading success: (1) applying the key features of…

In this article, the authors talk about the action research study they conducted involving literature discussion groups. They observed how students spontaneously took up roles as questioners, as emotional responders, as group facilitators, and as information providers without having been assigned roles in literature circles. They then selected…

In this article, the author examines the character of the conversations generated in an elementary teacher group as they worked on mathematical problems together and analyzed their students' work. Two distinct forms of talk--"exploratory" and "expository"--were found. The first type of talk occurred most prominently when discussions centered on…

In this article, we examine the construction of word meaning by students during collaborative activities in a multicultural classroom at a Dutch primary school. The analysis is based on recordings of student talk in small groups of four or five students during mathematics lessons. Difficulties with specific terms and expressions frequently arose…

Sexual harassment is a pervasive problem on our nation's college and university campuses, one that can have devastating results. Educational institutions had been shielded from liability for sexual harassment until the late 1990s, when two landmark Supreme Court decisions set forth a new standard for liability of institutions where students are…

This study involved fourth grade children as co-researchers of their engaged, aesthetic reading experience. As members of the "Readers as Researchers Club," they documented their engagement with text--how they create, enter, and sustain the story world. The children, who self-identified as avid readers, explored the activities central to their…

The integration of traditional (offline and face-to-face) and virtual ethnographic methods can aid researchers interested in developing understandings of relationships between online and offline cultural life, and examining the diffuse and sometimes global character of youth resistance. In constructing this argument, I have used insights from…

The purpose of the study was to examine how reader response journals followed by classroom discussion ("Reader Response Plus") contributed to students' reading comprehension and to their attitudes toward reading. The study was conducted in a rural school in upstate New York. The twelfth grade class that participated in the study…

Effective group programs with challenging youth need to be grounded in a clear understanding of core principles that guide effective practice. This article examines the operating philosophy of an established outdoor education and therapy program which combines the Re-ED philosophy of Nicholas Hobbs (1994) with adventure education developed by…

This qualitative case study illustrates barriers to informal argumentation and reasoned debate, i.e., "critical discourse," in online forums. The case is the computer conference of a 15-week, graduate-level humanities course offered entirely at a distance. Twelve students, all with families and careers, were enrolled in the course. We read all…

This study explores the relative effectiveness of in class online discussion and face to face, tutor led discussion in preservice teachers' recall of concepts. Two groups of preservice teachers, who engaged in different discussion modes, were tested two weeks later on how many concepts they could recall. No significant difference in the recall…

The topic of this article concerns how students make sense of categories of progressive inquiry made available to them through a discussion and inquiry type of software called Future Learning Environments 2 (FLE2). The idea behind tools of this kind is to induce approaches to school-work that build on the metaphor of learning as research. By…

The 30 papers presented at Wake Forest University's 1997 Annual Research Forum (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) are as follows: "To Sprint or Crawl: The Effect of Classroom Activities on Student Behavior: (R. Allen); "Generating Good Grammar: Traditional and Whole Language Approaches" (D. Alexander); "Effective Teaching…

This paper reports on the effectiveness of an innovative course design that bridges classes from two different disciplines. The "Bridge" design creates assignments in two classes: a summary class and a panel class. The design encourages students to engage in teaching and interacting with their peers within and across disciplines, and…