Since its release in 1979 the TOEIC® (Test of English for International Communication) has been consistently and widely used by educational institutions and companies of Japan despite criticisms that it provides little useable information about language ability. In order to both reduce the extreme focus on and also aid with the practical…

This paper adds to the limited body of literature and concentrates on investigating the impact of a new peer tutoring framework, 'Interdependent Cross Age-Peer Tutoring' (ICAT), on the socioacademic process of learning of self-concepts. ICAT is informed by Social Interdependence Theory, a socio-psychological perspective which aims to make…

The purpose of this research was to determine what type of correlations existed between student and parent attitudes towards using smartphones in school and the resulting impact on achievement, specifically for low-achieving students. Participants in the study were third-grade students and their parents from a primary school in Singapore. The…

This dissertation is a qualitative study of a curriculum I designed for composition students in the Fall of 2012. The curriculum I created is informed by the Freirean edict that a self-generated desire to "create knowledge" is far more likely to result in meaningful, holistic learning than simply "banking" information. In the…

The purpose of this study was to begin examining the impact of the Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education (CASE). Under development since 2008, the curriculum is intended to integrate core academics and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) into agricultural education programs. This longitudinal descriptive correlational study…

The UK government's austerity cuts have negatively impacted many voluntary-sector interventions that provided support to refugees. One such intervention, the Refugee Integration and Employment Service (RIES), is discussed in this paper. The RIES was a UK Border Agency-funded integration programme for recognised refugees and operated through…

In line with a growing interest in teacher research engagement in second language education, this article is an attempt to shed light on teachers' views on the relationship between teaching and practice. The data comprise semi-structured interviews with 20 teachers in England, examining their views about the divide between research and practice in…

This paper deals with the question in what ways teachers and course designers can support the development and exertion of learner autonomy among online university students. It advocates that a greater attention to learner autonomy could help more students to complete their course successfully and thus contribute the decrease of the high dropout…

In this article I propose a conception of empowering educational dialogue within the framework of humanistic education. It is based on the notions of Humanistic Education and Empowerment, and draws on a large and diverse repertoire of dialogues--from the classical Socratic, Confucian and Talmudic dialogues, to the modern ones associated with the…

This study investigates the noncompulsory language learning activities performed by a group of distance EFL learners in the Turkish Open Education System. Performance of these activities has been considered as an indicator of their learner autonomy. The data were collected through an online questionnaire and interviews. The study shows that in…

This article expands upon themes addressed in the 2012 CALICO opening plenary that I delivered at the University of Notre Dame. This extended interpretation allows me the opportunity to further explore the nature of participatory human communication and collaboration and offer some clarification of the proposed instructional model for promoting…

Instructional physical activity programs offer a great opportunity for college and university students to have the opportunity to engage and participate in various physical activities on a regular basis. For students who choose to enroll, the instructional physical activity courses plays an important role in providing undergraduates with the…

This article discusses insights gained from a case study on telecollaboration for intercultural communication in foreign language school contexts. Focus was on non-native English and German lingua franca conversations between pairs of students (aged 14-16, B1 level) from schools in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. Telecollaboration…

Based on a modern motivation theory of learning, self-determination theory (SDT), this study aimed to investigate the relationships between English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' motivation to speak, autonomous regulation, autonomy support from teachers, and classroom engagement, with both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The…

It is widely accepted that teacher cognitions--what teachers know, think, and believe--play a significant part in teachers' decision-making processes. The present study investigated the specific cognitions that 74 Dutch undergraduate and postgraduate student teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) had on grammar instruction and how these…