High school religion teachers in Catholic schools are central to the mission of such schools and teach in every Catholic high school. Research on effective teaching has not traditionally included this subset of teachers. The overall purpose of this study was to research the best instructional practices for high school religion teachers in…

Many teachers feel that students should not struggle with text; instead, they should read easier texts in order to learn from them and make adequate growth in reading. In turn, teachers might use easier or leveled texts as a solution or a graphic novel or multimodal version to differentiate text reading and to motivate and engage reluctant…

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent of embodying thinking levels in the eighth-grade textbook and teachers' classroom questions and exams. Five teachers who teach eighth grade were chosen from schools that obtained the highest and lowest TIMSS results in Zarqa City, Jordan. Textbook content analysis, teachers' classroom observation…

Taking into account prior research suggesting a lack of student participation in online discussions, this study examines the influence of peer moderator (PM) role assignment on students' participation and that of their peers' participation in online discussions. Eighty-four participants operated in a moderator role, reciprocally. Moreover, the…

In schools, children do not tend to be positioned as fully human. Strong neoliberal currents perpetuate objectification, a focus on technical mastery, and mechanisms for sorting and categorizing. As part of our ongoing design-based research to revise a sequence of elementary literacy methods courses, we have collaborated university faculty and…

Gestures have been shown to play a key role in mathematical reasoning and to be an indicator that mathematical understanding is "embodied" -- inherently linked to action, perception, and the physical body. As learners collaborate and engage in mathematical discussions, they use discourse practices like explaining, refuting, and building…

This paper describes an initial pilot study of Rimac, a natural-language tutoring system for physics. Rimac uses a student model to guide decisions about "what content to discuss next" during reflective dialogues that are initiated after students solve quantitative physics problems, and "how much support to provide" during…

The research aimed to explore characteristics of individual behaviors as motivation, task commitment, and leadership exhibited by science gifted students at enrichment program in science gifted education center. Results showed that motivation was highest at introduction stage, but decreased as lessons progressed. Task commitment and leadership…

In a diverse, interconnected, and results-oriented world, students need to be confident and well-prepared public speakers. However, many students entering public speaking classrooms feel anxious and dread having to perform publicly (Bodie, 2010). Students' sense of Communication Apprehension (CA) is likely to increase for any of several…

This study analyzes the types of peer discussion that occur during lecture-based tutorial sessions. It focuses in particular on whether discussions of this kind have certain characteristics that might indicate success in the post-testing phase. The data were collected during an introductory physics course. The main data set was gathered with the…

The term "close reading" often conjures up an image of a teacher asking students several scripted questions that encourage them to reread and critically examine a text. The teacher then evaluates the students' responses. In this article, the authors offer another approach to close reading--one that places students' text-dependent…

The design and implementation of questioning, specifically in regards towards a higher level of thinking, is a common practice in many secondary social science classrooms (Bickmore & Parker, 2012). Questioning can help the teacher develop critical thinking concepts, scaffold discussions, and prod students towards an elevated level of cognition…

This engaging partner-reading activity provides students with an opportunity to improve their reading comprehension and text-based discussion skills. The activity, which can be used with intermediate and advanced learners, is ideal for English language learners in content classes and is particularly useful for building foundational knowledge of a…

The purpose of this article is to explore the use of picture walks in narrative and informational text as a method to encourage question generation. This article overviews the instructional benefits of having students generate their own questions before, during, and after reading. Featured are two classrooms where students pose questions through…

Research has strongly supported the role of classroom talk as a valuable teaching and learning tool. Carefully crafted teacher-student discussions that encourage broad student participation and knowledge building correlate with increased knowledge generation and higher academic achievement. To better understand classroom talk as an instructional…