In this article, the author describes an activity that involves classroom seating arrangements and allows students to talk about some of the implications of classroom furniture arrangements. The purpose of the activity is to provide students with an opportunity to think about ordinary things in their lives and push them to find connections between…

Participation, a commonly graded component of composition classrooms, is rarely the focus of current research studies. While some discussions have addressed grading practices or ways to increase participation, student and instructor voices have yet to be included in studies of classroom participation in composition courses. Yet these voices are…

When teachers and school librarians work together, student achievement increases. Librarians know this and have made sure their teachers and administrators know this as well. But it's a giant leap from knowing the value of collaboration and actually collaborating. The only way to convince teachers to take that step is to convince them that the…

Studies have shown that voracious reading improves students' academic performance in a variety of realms. In this article, 6th grade teacher Donalyn Miller explains how she has helped her students become committed readers. Her students are required to read at least 40 books each year in a variety of genres and styles. She gives them time to read…

This study examines the role of online communities in connecting and supporting librarian researchers, through the analysis of member activities in the online community for academic librarians that attended the 2014 Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL). The 2014 IRDL cohort members participated in the online community via Twitter…

Gabriela Montserrat (pseudonym) is a Mexican-American child classified by her school district as an "emerging bilingual" and is the focus of this qualitative case study that took place at a public elementary school located in a suburban community in the southwestern US in Mrs Pérez's (pseudonym) second-grade classroom. The student's use…

Although interculturality has been the focus of several studies which reveal a tendency to include an understanding of students' home culture and cultures around the world in the English language classes, few studies focus on the inclusion of an intercultural component in a class different from the English one. This article aims to share a…

This study reports on the types of academic talk that contribute to enhanced explanatory responses, reasoning, problem-solving and learning. The study involved 10 groups of 3-4 students who were provided with one of three linguistic tools (i.e. Cognitive Questioning, Philosophy for Children and Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR)) to scaffold…

This study reports on the pedagogical implications of using the Blackboard feature Discussion Board (DB) to improve students' learning in higher education. The study sample included three sections of female students--a total of 155 students--in an undergraduate course at an international university in Saudi Arabia. The impact of using DB on…

Language learning process works through the learners' own reflection on how they learn and it makes learners active in the sense that they learn to analyze their learning strategies. So they start making decisions, e.g., whether to improve them or not, and in which way. Generally, this trait is missing in traditional language teaching process and…

This article reports on our experiences in a German-American partnership in internationalizing the curriculum. In a globalized world, engaging other cultures and identities as well as understanding global issues and events from other perspectives are important qualifications that allow students to gain different insights in political science. Yet,…

This study investigated how a collaborative mentoring program influenced beginning science teachers' inquiry-based teaching and their reflection on practice. The one-year program consisted of five one-on-one mentoring meetings, weekly science education seminars, weekly mentoring group discussions, and self-evaluation activities. The participants…

Learning to argue is prerequisite to solving complex problems in groups, especially when they are multidisciplinary and collaborate online. Environments for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) can be designed to facilitate argumentative knowledge construction. This study investigates how argumentative knowledge construction in…

Lesson Study is a collaborative, cyclical and continuing professional development process, aiming at improving a lesson through critical reflection. This research is based on three cycles of Lesson Study conducted during a four-week workshop in Japan for 10 South African mathematics and science educators. A sub-group developed and refined a high…

Informal "teacher talk" about students is ubiquitous, but it remains largely unexamined. This study critically examines casual, everyday teacher discourse about students perceived to be racially or culturally "different." Data were collected through participants' journal entries, group discussion, and interviews. Findings…