One of the prerequisites or unavoidable results of multiculturalism is that the classroom becomes what Mary Louise Pratt calls a "contact zone." But how does the teacher keep discussion productive without taking sides? How does the teacher abdicate enough authority to diminish the asymmetricality but not so much that the class becomes a…

Classroom language and literacy practices need to be reconceptualized to account for the valuable role talk and interaction play in the process of learning to write. Teachers should construct learning environments within which interaction between students and teachers is the primary focus. The participation framework of kindergarten journal…

Concerns have been expressed both in the popular press and in the professional literature regarding skills instruction and the literature-based movement. There is a growing perception that direct instruction in "basic" skills is discouraged within a literature-based philosophy. This booklet challenges this perception as a myth through…

A series of studies involving 19 elementary students with severe emotional disturbance (SED), who were identified as aggressive, and 19 typical students in different types of educational settings, investigated the relationship between school environments and the aggressive behavior of children with SED. The social interactions of the children who…

This collection of essays on teaching is written from the perspective of a high school English teacher. The ideas for these essays are drawn from experiences, from debates in the faculty lounge, from confrontations with parents, and from crisis interventions with distraught students. Personal narratives and classroom vignettes are used to…

This study guide offers a different approach, teleconferencing, to new information, ideas, and resources on the film, "To Kill a Mockingbird." Following general information on "then and now," the guide consists of sections entitled: Preparing to Teach TKM: Special Considerations (by Charles Suhor and Larry Bell); Historical…

This paper discusses miscommunication in speech acts, speech act research, and applications in the classroom. A new model of speech acts proposed by Celce-Murcia, Dornyei, and Thurrell is discussed. The distinguishing feature of this model is that the pivotal center is discourse competence. Discourse competence interacts with the three subfields…

Most lawyers have never been teachers and may be intimidated by the thought of talking to a class of students in a law-related education program. This handbook provides suggestions on how to set up orientation sessions for lawyers and other law-related resource people as well as tips for presenters, including how to get and keep the students'…

A writing exercise used in one college-level introductory Spanish literature course has been found helpful in converting student frustration into a challenge and changing perceptions of the teacher from adversary to ally. When the first reading assignment is due, the teacher tells the students how frustrating the class can be and lets them begin…

A study of whole language teaching in urban heterogeneous classrooms was undertaken to identify teacher student classroom discourse patterns. Using the Gutierrez Index of Coding Schema researchers identified three discourse scripts in the 14 bilingual and multicultural classrooms in Southern California under investigation. These were: the…

Describing the physical, social, psychological, and human context of middle and secondary schools, this book is designed to help new teachers negotiate the environment of the schools in which they find themselves. The book is intended for first-year or second-year teachers, education majors in their final year of preparation, "second…

This document contains the proceedings of the annual meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group. Papers include: (1) "What Does It Really Mean To Teach Mathematics through Inquiry?" (Raffaella Borasi); (2) "The High School Math Curriculum" (Peter Taylor); (3) "Triple Embodiment: Studies of Mathematical…

Two studies investigated what instructional issues may be involved when second-language television recordings with first-language subtitles are used in the second-language classroom. The experiments were conducted in an English-as-a-Second-Language class in advanced listening for native Chinese-speakers. In the first experiment, conducted at…

A study investigated the effects of Interactive Television (ITV--a two-way television system of instruction which is a near replication of face-to-face classroom instruction) on learning. Sixty-seven rural, midwestern high school students who were taking classes via ITV were asked to complete a network analysis survey to identify the frequency of…

This study examined how modes of organizing conversation determine the type of knowledge conveyed to preschool and kindergarten children. Approximately 150 audiotaped conversations from 23 classes of students of different age levels from 2 to 6 years were analyzed. Children's spontaneous speaking turns or answers to teachers' questions were…