This article addresses the issue of helping students who work collaboratively on mathematical problems with the aim of raising the level of their mathematical understanding and competence. We investigated two kinds of teacher interventions aimed at helping students. The rationale of these interventions was based on a process model for interaction…

Business needs in many corporations call for learning outcomes that involve problem solutions, and creating and sharing new knowledge within workplace situations that may involve collaboration among members of a team. We argue that work-based activities (WBA) and computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) are appropriate components for…

Utilizing an integration of social-cognitivist and socio-cultural approaches, this study--comparing the interactive processes among peers and their mentor in two contrasting groups--was designed to explore the reasons why two learning groups, engaged in an inquiry-based learning project with comparatively sustained discussion, produced vastly…

This article offers teachers a view of powerful instruction that empowers all students. The focus of the article is the following question: How can teachers more effectively respond to classroom diversity and help all students improve or "get smarter"? The remainder of the article defines high access instruction (HAI), contrasts high- and…

The present study sought to compare the effects of training teachers in specific communication skills designed to promote thinking and scaffold learning on teachers' and students' verbal behaviours during cooperative group work. Thirty teachers and 826 children from years 5 to 7 participated in the study. The results show that when teachers are…

Many teacher education programs, no matter how well planned and coordinated for program coherence, continue to produce fragmented experiences for students. For the student, this fragmentation is often experienced as the juggling of separate courses in subject matter content, teaching methods, and the foundations of education, as well as loosely…

The distinction between revising and editing is a hard one for middle schoolers to grasp. Bruce Saddler knows that students must understand that writing means making meaning, and making meaning requires revision. Internalizing that concept and the steps that help achieve it requires a process characterized by peer conferencing, revision guides…

How to use the online social learning communities to improve quality and quantity of interactions in physical social learning communities is an important issue. This work describes the design and implementation of multilayer educational services platforms that enable learners to establish their own online social learning communities and integrate…

This paper reports a study on anxiety in Chinese undergraduate non-English majors at three different proficiency levels. By way of survey, observations, reflective journals and interviews, the study revealed that (1) a considerable number of students at each level felt anxious when speaking English in class, (2) the more proficient students tended…

The present study had three purposes. The first was to further explore the psychometric properties of the Preferred Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory [Zhang, L. F. (2003). "The preferred thinking styles in teaching inventory." Unpublished test. The University of Hong Kong: Hong Kong]. The second was to test the hypothesis that the…

Now well into its second decade, the field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) appears healthy, encompassing a diversity of topics of study, methodologies, and representatives of various research communities. It is an appropriate time to ask: what central questions can integrate our work into a coherent field? This paper proposes…

A problem solving protocol is described and then applied to a teacher training problematic situation in science and technology education. The problem consists of improving a learning community involved in education research, development and communication. Some remarks concerning the strengths and limitations of using the protocol are made in…

One approach to providing collaborative opportunities for students of biology is cooperative learning, a theoretically grounded and well-researched approach in education that can increase students' learning of subject matter and improve their attitudes toward both academics in general and the subject matter specifically. This article presents an…

There is increasing interest in creating frameworks for online discussions to improve learning outcomes in higher education environments. Many of these frameworks rely on and promote argumentation-based "challenge" models as the primary mode of discourse. This study tested one existing framework, created by Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson (1997),…

Objective: Demonstrating psychotherapy competency in trainees will test the resources of psychiatry training programs. The authors outline the phases of team-based learning (TBL). Methods: The University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, Tulsa (OUCM-T), Department of Psychiatry reorganized its psychodynamic psychotherapy didactic course using TBL.…