Background: In science education today, there is an emerging focus on what is happening in situ, making use of an array of analytical traditions. Common practice is to use one specific analytical framing within a research project, but there are projects that make use of multiple analytical framings to further the understanding of the same data,…

Following the 2016 presidential election, the author, the chief diversity officer at San José State University (SJSU), began receiving calls from professors who were anxious about facilitating discussions in their classrooms. At SJSU, a significant number of students were upset by--and fearful about-- incidents of hate and harassment nationwide,…

Although compositionists recognize that student talk plays an important role in learning to write, there is limited understanding of how students use conversational moves to collaboratively build knowledge about writing across contexts. This article reports on a study of focus group conversations involving first-year students in a cohort program.…

This study compared students' learning in troubleshooting and problem solving activities. The troubleshooting activities provided students with solutions to conceptual problems in the form of refutation texts; namely, solutions that portray common misconceptions, refute them, and then present the accepted scientific ideas. They required students…

I examined the impact of a self-diagnosis activity on students' conceptual understanding and achievements in physics. This activity requires students to self-diagnose their solutions to problems that they have solved on their own--namely, to identify and explain their errors--and self-score them--that is, assign scores to their solutions--aided by…

Research, reflection, and evaluation of online classes indicated a need for graduated scaffolding for first time students experiencing distance learning. In order to promote student engagement in the online learning process, I designed SOS for beginning online students. Sixty-three online students were offered an opportunity to participate in a…

Research addressing the effects of cohort size on student success in asynchronous online discussions is sparse. As such, the following study attempted to determine an optimal student cohort size to enhance success and engagement within online discussions in general education courses at a large post-secondary university consisting of predominately…

We argue for an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach that we call the Integration of Research and Education in the Classroom, which highlights and crosses disciplinary boundaries to challenge each field's assumptions, limitations, conceptual and interpretive purview. We use a set of examples that center on problematizing various aspects of the…

Normative discourses about higher education institutions may perpetuate stereotypes about institutions. Few studies explore student perceptions of universities and how transformative pedagogical interventions in university classrooms may address institutional stereotypes. Using Plumwood's notion of dualism, this qualitative study analyses…

As collaborative learning is actualized through evolving dialogues, temporality inevitably matters for the analysis of collaborative learning. This study attempts to uncover sequential patterns that distinguish "productive" threads of knowledge-building discourse. A database of Grade 1-6 knowledge-building discourse was first coded for…

This article explores digital learner presence in various higher education degrees in a regional institution in NSW, Australia. Several tools used for online teaching are explored through individual research projects in relation to the learner's presence with the tool being used. It was found that a variety of online teaching tools provided…

The goal of this study is to investigate the role of English Language Arts (ELA) teachers' verbal discourse moves in scaffolding adolescent students' argumentative thinking in small group interpretive discussions about literature. Demands related to argumentation may present particular challenges for adolescent students (Biancarosa & Snow,…

Talk moves simulations were used in tutorials for a mathematics education unit. Pre-service teachers (PSTs) and tutors were surveyed about their perceptions of the purposes, benefits, and drawbacks of the simulations. There was strong support from both groups for the benefits of talk moves in developing PSTs' ability to manage discussions, ask…

This study explored how often Saudi EFL teachers engage in professional development (PD) activities and how useful these activities were to them for their teaching practices. A random sample of seventy-seven English language teachers in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, was selected. Questionnaires were used as a data collection tool. The…

Since MOOC is suffering high dropout rate, researchers try to explore the reasons and mitigate it. Focusing on this task, we employ a composite model to infer behaviors of learners in the coming weeks based on his/her history log of learning activities, including interaction with video lectures, participation in discussion forum, and performance…