Background: There is currently ongoing debate in Hong Kong between the teachers' union and the Government on the reduction of large class size (typically more than 40 students) in secondary schools and whether smaller class sizes might facilitate improvements in teaching and learning. In fact, many Hong Kong secondary schools have already started…

As US classrooms approach a decade of response to No Child Left Behind, many questions and concerns remain around the education of those labeled as "English language learners," in both English as a Second Language and bilingual education classrooms. A national policy context where standardized tests dominate curriculum and instruction…

Audience response systems (ARS) are effective tools for improving learning outcomes and student engagement in large undergraduate classes. However, if students do not accept ARS and do not find them to be useful, ARS may be less effective. Predicting and improving student perceptions of ARS may help to ensure positive outcomes. The present study…

The purpose of this paper is to examine how dialogue is involved in learning and teaching in the classroom. Dialogue is present in many forms as it is used in group interactions, used with technology and how pre-service teachers communicate with their school supervisors during their training. Research was conducted through Educational Resources…

This mixed method study examined the oral contributions and personal journal writing of 8 focal students in an eleventh-grade integrated history/English classroom to ascertain whether and to what extent the students had appropriated three types of cognitive strategies desired and modeled by their teachers. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of…

This study introduces performative identity as a lens for understanding student participation in discursive classroom routines and potentials for fostering student agency and enhanced learning. We argue that student negotiation of performative identities can facilitate productive transformations of individual and group trajectories. This study…

This paper studies high school classroom sequences, compiled through critical sociolinguistic ethnography, where norm-transgression is made explicit, and how authority is recovered by the teacher after an open period where class participants generally seize to digress. This way, we will be able to approach several dimensions of linguistic…

This paper examines the media coverage of the murder of a young Muslim girl in Mississauga, Ontario in December 2007. We examine how that coverage moved from concerns for a terrible family event to the use of the language of Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations." We explore the nature of this exaggeration that occurs in times of…

We report an analysis of the language used by two instructors teaching two undergraduate mathematics classes that exhibited high student participation yet differed in their level of dialogical engagement. We focus on the way instructors' language contributes to opening or closing the opportunities for students' engagement with mathematical dialog,…

The development of transcripts is central to the work of many researchers yet questions of what and how researchers transcribe, and why, receive little attention in research literature. Conversation analysis is one research approach that has consistently addressed the integral relationship between theoretical and methodological perspectives,…

This study examines the effectiveness of using scholarly descriptions of inquiry-based teaching as a professional development strategy aimed at improving elementary teachers' social understandings (i.e., how teachers perceive their own and their students' social roles and relationships in the context of inquiry-based science instruction). The…

This paper is part of a larger project on teacher-student interaction and the contextual issues which shape them. It reported that the reticence of English majors is caused by the communicative environment that the teachers create in their interactions with their students. The data were collected through observations, audio- and videotaping, and…

The recent publication of "The New Zealand Curriculum" calls for students to become connected, creative, confident life-long learners. To realise this vision, fundamental change is required in the way teachers and students think about and participate in classroom-based teaching and learning. This paper discusses one aspect of an action…

In attempting to answer the question "How is disability represented in plays?" two approaches are considered, one semiotic and literary and the other concerned with notions of stereotyping drawn from disability studies. The five plays on which the discussion is based are school examination set texts, raising questions about classroom…

Communication is not a simple concept. On the contrary, it is one that entails multiple aspects of a complex process. It is interesting to see that there are many definitions of communication, some of which, in the authors' opinion, fit better in the educational environment by considering the impact of communication as one that influences all…