The middle years are a crucial stage of schooling where the range in student achievement widens and progress for some students slows significantly (Cairney, Buchanan, Sproats & Lowe 1998, Hill & Russell 1999). Despite moves towards middle school reform and improved literacy standards, there remains a gap in literacy provision for young…

During the last two decades an increasing number of international faculty specializing in different disciplines have been hired by U.S. institutions of higher education. Most of these instructors have been college educated in their native countries but have come to the United States for graduate studies and then earned doctoral degrees from U.S.…

Slide shows presented with software such as PowerPoint or WordPerfect Presentations can trap instructors into bad teaching practices. Research on memory suggests that slide-show instruction can actually be less effective than traditional lecturing when the teacher uses a blackboard or overhead projector. The author proposes a model of classroom…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how very young children can influence their daily life in preschool, in relation to teacher control. The specific questions studied were: What opportunities do the children have to make their own choices and take the initiative? How does teacher control manifest itself? What form do permanent…

This study aims to investigate the role of mediation in the learning process from a sociocultural perspective, activity theory in particular. This study was carried out in a primary English immersion school within the CCUEI Programs in Mainland China. Data were collected mainly through observations and interviews, which were then supplemented by…

At its most fundamental level, like all instruction, comprehension instruction is composed of moment-to-moment interactions among students and between students and their teacher. Children's competence at making meaning from texts and their motivation to read are shaped by a variety of classroom influences, one of the most important of which may be…

Grounded in sociocultural theory, this study uses an ecological approach to examine how student interactions within a dual-language school context may offer affordances for increased linguistic and conceptual understanding. Using qualitative analysis of student discourse, this paper focuses on data from recorded interactions between pairs of…

Language ideologies shape educational practices in ways that can either limit or expand students' engagement with academic content. This article examines science lessons with third and fourth grade English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students, focusing on (a) regular lessons, in which the monolingual teacher speaks English while a…

Using a blend of social constructionism, critical feminism, and dialogue theory, the discourse of nine Manitoba superintendents is examined to determine if it illustrates particular gendered assumptions regarding superintendents' leadership style. Qualitative inquiry and analysis methods were utilized to identify emerging themes, or topics of…

Teachers have an important role in classroom communication, classroom behavior management, and the achievement of teaching aims. The settings in which effective and successful classroom management is conducted are bound to make a contribution to students' success. A lot of research has dealt with classroom management and teaching skills to…

This study examines the social construction of participation during whole-class interaction in an elementary classroom community. In viewing participation processes in classroom interactions as socially and locally embedded and constructed practices, the study illuminates forms and patterns of interaction via which particular participation modes…

Classroom talk is regarded as essential in engaging and developing student understandings in the domain of mathematics. The processes of classroom talk may occur in quite different ways, ways that shape particular opportunities for learning mathematics. Little is known about how the talk produced in innovative approaches to education mediates the…

This article builds on 30h of observations made in classrooms in secondary schools in Tanzania in the fall of 2004. The article presents an empirical study using an experimental group that was taught in Kiswahili and a control group taught the same topics in English. The author takes the reader straight into some of the classrooms and gives…

This paper reports a self-study of three faculty of colour engaged in teaching a special summer session geared to recruiting people of colour to teaching. Given our past experiences in institutions of higher education, we recognised the unique situation and potential of faculty of colour teaching a class made up almost exclusively of students of…

This paper analyses data from a curriculum intervention project designed to introduce new forms of discussion, seen as educationally effective, into the primary classroom. While the introduction of talk as an aid to learning is premised on a social approach to learning, such interventions are often evaluated in terms of cognitive benefits and…