There is a relationship between the structural supports teachers set in place to foster academic discourse in their classrooms and the quality of learning that is realized by their students. Research suggests that students who are given frequent and equitable opportunities for academic talk will be more likely to make academic gains. In this…

In a preceding case study, a process-focused demand-driven approach for organising flexible educational programmes in higher professional education (HPE) was developed. Operations management and instructional design contributed to designing a flexible educational model by means of discrete-event simulation. Educational experts validated the model…

Problem based learning (PBL) started to spread in health professions in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of this century. There are several challenges facing its implementation such as defects on interpersonal communications and self-directed learning. These challenges would affect students' performance in small group discussions and their…

This exploratory netnographic study describes how a sample of Ontario kindergarten teachers perceive the new Ontario Full Day Kindergarten (FDK) curriculum. Discussions from teacher message boards, the comment sections of online news articles, and interviews with kindergarten teachers were analyzed and coded using a qualitative approach. Analysis…

A HUMAN RELATIONS TRAINING LABORATORY WAS CONDUCTED TO PROVIDE TRAINING IN INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS FOR DIETETIC INTERNS AND OCCUPATIONAL THERAPISTS. GENERAL OBJECTIVES OF THE TRAINING WERE--TO HELP STUDENTS BECOME MORE AWARE OF THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR, OF LEADERSHIP STYLES, WAYS OF RECEIVING CRITICISM, AND MODES OF DEALING WITH OTHERS. THE ONE-WEEK…

THE PILOT PROJECT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DESCRIBED HERE WAS DESIGNED TO OFFER GROUPS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS AN OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE APPLICATION OF NEWER METHODOLOGY AND LINGUISTIC SCIENCE TO TEACHING MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGES. THE PROJECT WAS CONDUCTED DURING THE 1962-63 ACADEMIC YEAR, WITH THE FIRST AND…

Intellectual, social, managerial and technical are four commonly reported categories of facilitation in online discussions. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether these four broad categories of facilitation were equally applied in online discussions and which specific skills were perceived to be more important. In this study,…

Medical students are often faced with an ethical dilemma within the clinical setting--to learn from as many patients as possible but to learn only with consenting patients. Although studies have examined patients' and students' views about informed consent, none have examined how medical students talk about consent-related behaviours in…

Colleges and universities recognize that one of the primary goals of higher education is to promote students' ability to think critically. Using data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNS), this study examined the relationship between faculty teaching practices and the development of students' critical thinking skills,…

The facilitation of critical thinking is one of the most frequently discussed potential benefits of the asynchronous online discussion environment, but many studies have reported that it does not occur to any great extent. This study investigated the effect of information provided to students on the facilitation of their critical thinking outcomes…

This paper examines students' mixed perceptions of the use of active learning techniques in undergraduate science lectures. Written comments from over 250 students offered an in-depth view of why students perceive these techniques as helping or hindering their learning and experience. Fourth- and fifth-year students were more likely to view…

This paper reports on phase 1 of a project commissioned by Learning and Teaching Scotland to explore the continuing professional development (CPD) needs of teachers in Scotland in years 2-6 of their careers. Nominal group technique (NGT) was employed to identify the CPD needs of year 2-6 teachers and to identify the relative priority of these…

Student-run literature circles within the classroom setting have been well documented in recent years. This past year the author was given the opportunity to have her fifth grade library class for an additional library period each week to devote to literature circles. For their program, the goal was to expand the student's pleasure in reading and…

The Great Eight competencies are work behaviors that promote employee effectiveness in 21st-century organizations. These competencies include enterprising and performing, adapting and coping, organizing and executing, creating and conceptualizing, analyzing and interpreting, interacting and presenting, supporting and cooperating, and leading and…

In this article, we address the ways children collaborate to inquire about text in the context of group discussions, addressing the question: How do students stay on-topic and sustain their discussions of text? We speculate that a framework for dialogic discourse, referred to as exploratory talk, allows students to understand that discussions of…