This article is situated in contemporary debates about the ways to achieve a scientific literacy that encourages a greater lay participation in public debates and political decision making. Drawing on the notion of "relationship to scientific experts" (in French, "rapport aux experts scientifiques"), I explore the ways in which…

Two significant challenges in teaching college courses are getting students to complete the readings and, beyond that, having them engage in deep reading. We have developed a specific group work format within our courses to facilitate both deep reading and active discussion of course material. Early in the semester, students are assigned to their…

In many college classes, students spend their time learning about the theories from the linear logic of a textbook. However, true learning occurs when these theories are integrated with hands-on authentic experiences. Situated learning courses are designed to bridge the gap between the theoretical and the authentic. Students apply classroom…

In what ways might questioning techniques improve student learning? What kinds of questions enable educators to tap into different parts of the cognitive domain? How can questions engage students when their attention begins to wander? Many questions at the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy--particularly knowledge and comprehension--are closed-ended…

It is not uncommon for students in a teacher education program to bring with them a lack of experience in working with diverse populations. This culturally insular perspective often leaves them ill-prepared to face the highly diverse classrooms they will soon encounter. This study describes a context created for 120 students in an undergraduate…

For this creative scholarly project, preservice teachers were invited to participate with two instructors by offering their sociopolitical autobiographies and reflective-reflexive reading responses for group discussion and analysis to explore the journal's theme "Immigration and Teacher Education: The Crisis and the Opportunity." The goal was to…

Being a principal was the most demanding job the author ever had. He worked hard, mostly in isolation. Like most principals, he struggled to manage the position's political and bureaucratic necessities in order to concentrate on what he thought was the fundamental work of schools: teaching and learning. He struggled to continue to learn and grow…

"Collaborative video annotation" (CVA) allows multiple users to annotate video and create a discussion asynchronously. This dissertation investigates 14 small-group CVA discussions held on YouTube in a pre-service teacher education course. Fourteen groups of 6-12 pre-service teachers (141 total) participated. Five of these groups (48…

This study explored learning and teaching of online classes. Examining the relationship between undergraduate students' participation and their final grades in five selected courses in an online learning environment and exploring differences between the demographics characteristics of age, race, and gender to students' participation (total number…

A growing amount of research focuses on learning in group settings and more specifically on learning in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) settings. Studies on western students indicate that online collaboration enhances student learning achievement; however, few empirical studies have examined student satisfaction, performance, and…

Density has been reported as one of the most difficult concepts for secondary school students (e.g. Smith et al. 1997). Discussion about the difficulties of learning this concept has been largely focused on the complexity of the concept itself or student misconceptions. Few, if any, have investigated how the concept of density was constituted in…

This article discusses audience responses to a children's soap opera produced and broadcast in Kenya. It examines the evaluation process in relation to qualitative audience research within Cultural Studies. It challenges an Entertainment-Education model of media as vehicles for messages and links strongly with Communication for Social Change…

"A Framework for K-12 Science Education" identifies eight science and engineering practices for K-12 classrooms. These practices, along with core ideas and crosscutting concepts, define the nation's learning goals for science. An important advance from earlier standards (AAAS 1993, NRC 1996), these practices are clearly identified "not" as…

More than five million U.S. students are English language learners (ELLs), or 57% more than a decade ago. If that growth continues, sooner or later, all teachers will teach ELLs. But many teachers are unprepared for this challenge. They might presume that "good teaching" helps ELLs learn content (de Jong and Harper 2008) or that an English-only…

Graduate students entered our online classrooms with robust, but nonscientific, opinions on climate change. To expose students to critical analysis of media and emphasize the nature of science, we required them to access scientific reports and participate in mandatory peer discussions. An introductory survey probed incoming knowledge and opinions,…