As public relations professions advance toward new media platforms, one traditional tool--the backgrounder/position paper (more technically termed white paper) remains a compelling vehicle to impart enduring professional competencies. Moreover, the skills requisite to produce a white paper can be deployed in a variety of new and traditional media…

Drawing on critical, socio-cultural and sociolinguistic theories of writing, text and voice, this ethnographic study examines the challenges that a mature ESL student and her instructors in a university course on Spanish Language Media face as they co-construct a common understanding of academic literacy and voice in an undergraduate General…

The challenges of teaching writing and encouraging students to write are many. However, one of the most difficult issues to deal with is students' reluctance to write in any language, even their home language. Because of this reluctance, being asked to write in English as a foreign or second language can feel like a double burden. Learners of…

Hardly a week passes without yet another highly visible court case involving the rights and freedoms of secondary school students. The subject matter of these lawsuits is as varied as the activities of the students who have gone to court to vindicate their legal interests. The outcome of such cases also runs the gamut; some student plaintiffs (and…

I describe three activities that allow students to explore the ideas of evolution, natural selection, extinction, mass extinction, and rates of evolutionary change by engaging a simple model using paper, pens, chalk, and a chalkboard. As a culminating activity that supports expository writing in the sciences, the students write an essay on mass…

This article problematises a broad consensus in favour of importing popular culture into classrooms as a means of engaging pupils, transforming interactional norms and facilitating pupil understanding. A literacy lesson in which an English primary school teacher invoked the televised talent show, "X factor", in organising the class to…

This paper reports on a new pedagogy for Chinese language teaching and learning at elementary schools through exploratory classroom instruction using Information and Communication Technologies. The study used quantitative method to collect data from two elementary schools of China. The results showed that: (1) the three-in-one pedagogy of…

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a net-based peer review process for improving Chinese adult e-learners' English writing ability. A class of 36 students participated in this study, which lasted one school year of two semesters. Participants were divided into three groups according to their English writing abilities at the…

In "Death in the Classroom", Jeffrey Berman writes about Love and Loss, the course that he designed and taught two years after his wife's death, in which he explored with his students the literature of bereavement. Berman, building on his previous courses that emphasized self-disclosing writing, shows how his students wrote about their…

This study evaluated the effects of a short-term professional development session. Forty volunteer high school biology teachers were randomly assigned to one of two professional development conditions: (a) developing deep content knowledge (i.e., control condition) or (b) evaluating student errors and understanding in writing samples (i.e.,…

Effective teaching in schools requires flexibility, energy and commitment. Successful teaching also requires that teachers are able to address learner's needs and understand the variations in learner's styles and approaches. Teachers can accomplish these requirements while creating an optimal teaching-learning environment by utilizing a variety of…

(Purpose) The purpose of this study was to describe secondary preservice teachers' (N = 113) past favorite writing experiences and its implications for including writing in their future instruction. (Methodology) Data was collected through a survey and drawings. (Results) Preservice teachers' written answers were helpful to inform specifically…

Use formative assessment to dramatically improve your students' writing. In "Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment", educator and international speaker Harry G. Tuttle shows you how to guide middle and high school students through the prewriting, writing, and revision processes using formative assessment techniques that work.…

The effects of progress feedback on university students' writing mastery goal, self-efficacy beliefs, and writing performance were examined in this experiment. Students in the experimental condition (n = 42) received progress feedback on their writing assignment, whereas students in the control condition (n = 44) received feedback without progress…

The authors tested the predictions of a game theory model of plagiarism, using a test population of student papers submitted to an online plagiarism detection program, over five semesters in a non-majors biology course with multiple sections and high enrollment. Consistent with the model, as the probability of detection and the penalty if caught…