Presents annotations of eight books in which teachers talk about their classrooms, reflecting upon the kinds of interactions they seek to promote among learners and the environments they have created in their schools. (SR)

Offers a narrative based on a real event, in the form of a "docustory," describing that moment when teaching worked--when, in an instructional setting, communication was "perfect,""best," or "excellent." Describes how, in a one-room country school where "buddy assignments" were common, a second-grade boy helped a third grader to finally understand…

Offers a narrative based on a real event, in the form of a "docustory," describing that moment when teaching worked--when, in an instructional setting, communication was "perfect,""best," or "excellent." Describes how the decision to make teaching his profession crept up on and seduced an unwary student who had other plans. (SR)

Discusses the use of "real talk" in the classroom (to develop critical thinking skills), where teachers share their views and reasoning processes with students and listen to students' points of view about topics they care about. (SR)

Reviews eight instruments designed to assess motivation to communicate in the classroom, including cross-situational anxiety (communication apprehension and shyness), situational anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Communication Anxiety Inventory, Form State), cross-situational willingness (willingness to communicate and communication…

Discusses ways teachers can enrich and expand literature discussions by asking questions to center discussion on aesthetic responses, rhetorical responses, metacognitive responses, and shared inquiry. (SR)

Reviews the book "Language, Classrooms and Computers," edited by Peter Scrimshaw. Notes that the book emphasizes the ways in which classroom computers can contribute to livelier, more productive classroom interaction. (SR)

Argues that the way in which students solve a particular problem can be analyzed to gain insight into how students think about the mathematics involved. Discusses the use of knowledge gained from listening to student conversations about their strategies to orchestrate classroom discussions. (ASK)

Illustrates a three-level analysis of classroom discourse as a means of examining in detail the implications of characterizing language teachers' questions as "display" questions. Attempts to demonstrate that the characterization of teachers' questions as display questions because they are non-referential is only relevant on one level of…

Illustrates how children's "poetic voices in action" provide context for the writing of poetry. Describes how the author taped hours of classroom interaction and the talk that surrounded the children's writing, browsing, reading and performance of poetry. Shares examples of reflective voices at play. Examines ways in which teachers can…

Suggests that negotiation as a rhetorical strategy can help compositionists rethink the connections between the public sphere and students' writing, and that it can also be a productive way to think of classroom interaction. Brings critical pressure to bear on the concept of negotiation as it has been traditionally conceived and theorized,…

Analysis of the math talk of two 17-year olds and their teacher showed how students used modality markers to convey social and math attitudes. One student conformed to and supported the dominant discourse of math as an impersonal set of procedures. The other expressed more personal involvement in math, which is typically not supported in classroom…

Describes a statistics project that focuses on communicating conclusions and understanding implicit assumptions that may affect conclusions based on the information. (Author/ASK)

Finds strong positive main effects for teacher immediacy and strong negative effects for teacher misbehavior on all three dimensions of credibility (competence, trustworthiness, and caring/goodwill). Finds, however, that with low teacher immediacy, both "nonmisbehavior" and misbehavior produced perceptions of low credibility; whereas…

Argues that a teacher's informed response to popular culture in the classroom requires consideration of how students use it in light of the economics of its production. Illustrates this through the classroom talk of 11- and 12-year-old boys discussing a horror series book. Discusses social uses of popular culture and the role of teachers regarding…