It may be argued that, from a virtue-ethical perspective, three aspects of a teacher's role in moral classroom conversations are of primary importance: (1) encouraging students to be morally reasonable, (2) stimulating the students' emotional involvement, and (3) guiding students toward a normative ideal of virtue. This study sets out to explore…

In this article, the author describes some efforts initiated about 2 decades ago to reform mathematics assessment. Many, if not most, of those ideas have gradually eroded not only from school practice but also from the knowledge base of current day thinking and research in mathematics assessment. In addition to exploring and explaining the policy,…

This article explores the practice of one accomplished teacher who uses follow-up probes to press her fourth- and fifth-grade students to clarify and articulate their ideas more fully. Qualitative analysis of field notes, teacher and student interviews, and video recordings of instruction, and discourse analysis of reading conferences revealed…

Climate change is a complex environmental problem that can be used to examine students' understanding, gained through classroom communication, of climate change and its interactions. The present study examines a series of four science sessions given to a group of primary school student teachers (n?=?20). This includes analysis of the…

Background/Context: Teachers in urban schools are sometimes seen as a large part of the problem with such schools. They are often spoken of as not knowing the content they need to know to teach, and they are not seen as committed to excellence or to reform-minded teaching; therefore, they are not seen as a resource for school improvement.…

This paper focuses on language classes where Greek-Cypriot students learn Turkish as their second Modern Foreign Language (MFL). Literature on MFL learning and emotions tends to focus on learners' emotions in relation to the production of the new language; however, MFL learning is also a space that provides the opportunity to language learners to…

While "voice" is frequently invoked in discussions of pupils' agency and empowerment, less attention has been paid to the dialogic dynamics of children's voices and the sociocultural features shaping their emergence. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic research involving recent recordings of 10- and 11-year-old children's…

Improving student learning is a constant goal within classrooms and schools, yet decisions based on a single test score may lead to less effective learning environments. Increased student learning stems from more effective and student-centered learning situations wherein students play a fundamental role in the formulation and development of their…

This article aims to offer an alternative to traditional participation frameworks used to analyse teacher/pupil talk in the classroom. Within curricular areas where learners are encouraged to articulate their own meaning and be creative in their use of language, a traditional participation framework, such as Initiation, Response, Follow-up, may…

In this paper we explore the value of theoretical triangulation as a methodological approach for the analysis of classroom interaction. We analyze an excerpt of a whole-class discussion in history from three theoretical perspectives: interactivity of the discourse, conceptual level raising and historical reasoning. We conclude that using…

This study features interactions with White students and female colleagues from two regions in the United States. Helm's Racial Identity Model for Whites offers a conceptual lens to understand classroom and workplace dynamics between Blacks and Whites in predominantly White postsecondary settings, regardless of national context. Findings suggest…

This short report explores how many young people sit down with their family at mealtimes, how often they talk with their family when they do and the relationship between mealtime talk and young people's confidence in and attitudes towards communication skills. Using data from the latest annual survey of 34,910 children and young people, it shows…

Conversational repair often occurs in conversations when people attempt to address communicative breakdowns or inaccuracy by way of repeating what have been said or putting them in another way. The review of literature on conversational repair revealed that as an important concept in pragmatic aspect of language, it is an effective strategy to…

Mathematics programmes in basic education are currently undergoing reform in Portugal. This paper sets out to see how teachers are putting the new guidelines for the teaching of mathematics into practice, with particular emphasis on maths communication in the classroom. To achieve this, an experiment in teaching the topic "Sequences and…

This paper discusses lessons learnt from a bigger study which investigates teaching approaches that could be employed to address the problem of classrooms that are dominated by teacher-centered approaches with minimal students' talk. The purpose of this paper is to establish the feasibility of success when argumentation is introduced as a part of…