In 2021, I completed an instructional redesign of an online section of a general education (GE) course titled "Criticizing Television." The redesign focused on utilizing Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TiLT) to create more meaningful engagement and deeper learning opportunities through discussion boards. Using the action research…

Literature circles are a socially supportive context in which students can cultivate their reader identities. This is especially promising for students with lower reader self-efficacies. This qualitative multiple case study explored the positioning practices of four Grades 5-6 students with comparatively low reader self-efficacy. In literature…

Curricular innovations in English language programs have placed increasing emphasis on providing opportunities for students to speak in the classroom, often through communicative group activities. However, despite decades of advocacy for small group talk, a rigorous conception of the quality of talk in these groups is lacking, particularly in the…

This dissertation investigates the role of multimedia applications in enhancing student engagement in higher education, with a particular focus on the dynamics of asynchronous discussion forums and lurking behaviors. Leveraging multimedia applications facilitates dynamic, inquiry-based discussions that promote deeper cognitive engagement and…

No higher-order skill will be more important for pupils to develop in the twenty-first century than critical thinking. Schools should integrate it into their curricula, thereby allowing students to acquire new skills in preparation for a dynamic and rapidly changing labour market. Educators, psychologists, and philosophers agree on the importance…

In this article, the authors offer strategies on how to make use of English language learners' (ELLs') linguistic repertoire and reframe their diverse skills as valuable assets to create more equitable and inclusive learning environments. The authors provide an example of a task that reframes language as an asset. The authors also discuss the…

Persuasive arguments attribute academics' persistent struggles in making time for writing to the increasing demands of a marketised sector on the academic role (Dickson-Swift et al. 2009; Macleod, Steckley, and Murray 2012). Whilst a significant body of literature promotes different writing interventions as potential solutions, the challenge of…

The recurrent reminders that climate changes are man-made and demand action, calls for the development of novel teaching approaches which besides transferring information, solutions, and values, also allow students to engage in critical reflections and through common inquiries strengthen their decision-making abilities and sustainable commitment.…

In recent years, we have been observing the phenomenon of an emerging scientific field: "digital transformation research" (DTR). Due to the diversity and complexity of its object of research digital, transformation is not effectively researchable if confined to the boundaries of individual disciplines. In the light of…

Purpose: This research aims to examine the pre-service teachers' learning when using STEM tasks with middle school students in a lesson study. Design/methodology/approach: This research adopted a qualitative methodology with an interpretative orientation. The participants are three pre-service teachers involved in a lesson study that took place in…

The purpose of this study was to explore how students interpret and negotiate menstruation in PE in online forums. We conducted a qualitative discourse analysis of 12 threads from 4 different German-language online forums, in which menstruation in PE is discussed by students. Our goal was to analyse which topics structure this online discourse and…

This study examined the moment-by-moment reciprocal relationships between teachers' instructional moves and students' social reasoning during collaborative small-group discussions. Social reasoning refers to students' justification of knowledge and understanding of complex issues from the social world. Participants included 131 fifth-grade…

Background: It has repeatedly been reported that, when making decisions under uncertainty, groups outperform individuals. Real groups are often replaced by simulated groups: Instead of performing an actual group discussion, individual responses are aggregated by a numerical computation. While studies have typically used unweighted majority voting…

This article examines pre-service language teachers' perceptions of learning and teaching and how differentiation manifests itself in them. The 67 participants visualised 'an ideal language learning situation' and complemented a number of teaching-related metaphors, for instance, 'A teacher is like…' and 'A learner is like…' in the first session…

While research has indicated that college students may benefit from collaboratively reading academic texts, little is known about how they co-construct comprehension through text-based discussions. This case study focused on two groups of undergraduate students with different degrees of participation in discussions -- one active group and one…