This article describes the Virtual Intercultural Team Tool (VITT) and discusses its processes and benefits. VIIT is a virtual platform designed with the aim of assisting European project teams to improve intercultural communication and build on their cultural diversity for effective implementation of their projects. It is a process-focused tool,…

The purpose of this study was to explore how three struggling, sixth grade readers experienced an after-school program designed to increase their affective and cognitive reading performance. Research in the areas of vocabulary acquisition, reading strategy development, discussion of text, time spent reading, engagement, and reader self-perception…

Early identification and intervention for students at risk for reading failure is essential to establish the foundational skills necessary for students to become skilled readers. The focus on evidence-based practices and data-driven decision making leads educators to consider additional instructional approaches, such as formative assessment (FA)…

The debates surrounding the effectiveness of teaching social work online highlight the challenges of adequately preparing students for face-to-face practice by way of web-based technologies. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to briefly describe how a particular School of Social Work when designing its part-time undergraduate degree…

The experiences of Chinese learners on two e-learning programmes in China were investigated, focusing particularly on the formation of learning communities. Data were collected using a range of instruments to access the learners' perspectives in depth and detail. Archer's account of reflexivity as the mediating power between structure and agency…

This article shares the results of a 3-year study of the use of threaded discussion groups within intact eighth-grade classrooms in a middle school in Southern California. Using mixed-methods data collection and analysis, it addresses questions about how technology may be used effectively to create engaged writers and how student access to…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of teaching action research through modeling. Participants were 11 doctoral students enrolled in a two-semester practitioner-based research course. In this study, I was both instructor and member of the research community. I modeled the steps of action research as I conducted a study…

Despite the importance of improving students' ability to learn from text, relatively little research has been conducted on motivational and instructional aspects of text learning, especially in real classroom contexts. The present study aimed to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the motivational and cognitive processes involved in children's…

This dissertation draws on textual reader response theory and humanities-based Disability Studies theories to explores the ways in which preservice teachers participating in a course called "Issues of Diversity in Children's and Adolescent Literature" and their instructor, who is also the researcher, made sense of representations of disability in…

This paper reported using the practical inquiry model as discourse guide to facilitate students' critical thinking in online discussion. It was found that almost all the postings of the students who had no knowledge of the inquiry model fell into exploration phase except three postings in triggering events phase and two in integration phase. In…

For years this author has been a keen advocate of co-operative talk as a way of learning and has felt confident that her pupils are learning from each other. She creates opportunities for her Year two class to talk and work in pairs and groups across the curriculum, with many such interactions occurring each day. As part of an action research…

An analysis of postings on the LM_NET discussion list was conducted to better understand school library media specialist (SLMS) perceptions of the potential effect of structural challenges on their role in teaching Web evaluation skills. Structural challenges are institutional in the form of government regulation and school culture, and are…

This article draws upon the author's experiences with designing and teaching a lower-level undergraduate course, Geography and Gender. It is proposed that there is a relative lack of resources available for conducting geography courses on gender, feminism, and/or sexuality and as such, this article addresses issues of text selection, course…

The authors maintain that developing an awareness of the skills and tasks involved in proficient reading is necessary in the middle grades and that success with these skills and tasks develops through peer interaction and meaningful activity, not through teacher-dominated discussion. To that end, in this column, the authors introduce the…

This paper is intended as a broad, conceptual and theoretical treatise on the aims of teaching art in the age of global digital media. To contextualize a set of general recommendations for art education technology pedagogy, I first provide an overview of the meteoric rise of on-line social networks, and consider questions about the nature and…