Modelled Discussions About Science (MoDAS), where adults talk together about scientific ideas, procedures and applications, were devised to model and improve the quality of pupils' discussions. Two examples from one of the project schools are examined to see if these aims were fulfilled and to comment on examples of cognitive and social aspects of…

Russia is witnessing an unprecedented explosion of interest in its history. This is entirely understandable. In the Russians' desire to understand the profound changes going on in different areas of their lives they are attempting to look at the past with new eyes, because the past has merged with the present and to a large extent determines its…

Expectations about how assessment takes place in schools rarely stand still. Summative and periodic assessments continue to have their traditional place in tracking pupil progress. Using assessment data for school accountability is a more recent phenomenon. Now the development of APP (Assessing Pupils' Progress) programmes in schools in England…

For generations of educators who grew up on the printed word (as compared to the electronic one), books remain an enjoyable activity that can contribute to knowledge building for professional educators with wide-ranging responsibilities. Yet they have broader value beyond personal consumption. In many school districts throughout the country, books…

Teaching anxiety is prevalent among professors. However, there is little research examining the relationship between personality and teaching anxiety in this population. The current study examines how different types of in-class behaviour are related to teaching anxiety and personality. Higher neuroticism and lower extraversion are related to…

Discussions are important classroom tools--and those that focus on science in society have the potential to interest and engage students. However, a conversation can quickly veer out of control if expectations are not clearly set by the teacher and if the discussion is not structured appropriately. This article describes the use of Socratic…

Although text-based discussions are considered by many literacy researchers and educators to be optimal contexts for teaching students how to comprehend text, a discussion is an ill-structured instructional space with complicated demands. A challenge for teacher educators is to acknowledge this complexity and provide ways for teachers to learn how…

We explore ways class, gender and race complicate perceptions and experiences of preservice teachers during an international field experience in Honduras. Data were collected over 5 years through observations, group discussions, course assignments, and on-site focus group interviews and post-trip individual interviews. An inductive approach…

In this paper, we address the need to develop an empirically-based understanding of the use of dialogue in teaching by discussing theory and research related to a pedagogical approach called collaborative reasoning (CR). CR is an instructional method designed to engage elementary school children in group discussions about controversial issues…

Challenging some of the current predominantly negative representations of the effects of religion on young people requires further research into faith and family life, particularly from the perspective of young people themselves. This article presents a preliminary report of a study of 40 young people, mostly Christians and Muslims, aged 13-15…

This study explores cross-age peers' tutoring behavior to support freshmen collaborating online. The study fits in with the need to inquire into the process of peer facilitation in CSCL-environments and focuses on types of peer support and on the evolution over time. The study was conducted with 19 pairs of fourth-year students, each tutoring one…

The current study aimed at finding the probable differences between the move structure of Iranian MA graduates' thesis discussion subgenres and those of their non-Iranian counterparts, on the one hand, and those of journal paper authors, on the other. It also aimed at identifying the moves that are considered obligatory, conventional, or optional…

An educational leadership preparation program for the 21st Century not only makes use of innovations in teaching and learning, but pushes the educational experience forward through the effective use of advanced technologies. This idea frames the delivery methodology for a blended online principal preparation program. The blended online program was…

This collaborative inquiry project brought together 14 Chinese Language teachers, 4 researchers and 2 Ministry of Education (MOE) curriculum specialists to co-design the Chinese Language curricula with the integrated use of information and communication technology (ICT). Three qualitative data sources--one-to-one interviews, focus group…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of voluntary discussion forums in a higher education setting. Specifically, we examined intrinsic forum participation and investigated its relation to course performance across two experiments. In Experiment 1 (N = 1284) an online discussion forum was implemented at the beginning of an…