Public art takes many forms, including commemorative sculptures, site-specific works, and collaborative murals. Additionally, public art can beautify an urban environment or raise awareness of social issues. Public works of art are a form of discourse and open conversations and dialogue, helping communities work toward unity and empowerment. Using…

Contrasting cases are a way to stimulate productive student discussions, discussions that prepare students to learn from more traditional activities such as classroom lectures and worked examples. Examples from a unit on variability show that students gain long-lasting insight into the structure and purpose of statistical formulas. (Contains 2…

In this study, the effects of argumentation-eliciting interventions on conceptual understanding in evolution were investigated. Two experiments were conducted: In the 1st, 76 undergraduates were randomly assigned to dyads to collaboratively solve and answer items on evolution; half of them were instructed to conduct an argumentative discussion,…

This study focused on the effects of peer moderation on meaningful interactions in online discussions. A meaningful interaction was defined as a message relating to a discussion topic, responding to a previous message, and adding substance to the discussion. A randomized-subject, posttest-only control group design was used to test the first…

In this study over the course of one school year, I set out to look closely at what the diverse fifth-grade students in Ms. Jean's urban class were learning from the social justice curriculum. As a former kindergarten teacher at Gonzales myself, in this project I wanted to know what children said, thought, and did when they were asked to read…

The Internet can be a tremendous aid to research, information sharing, and social networking, but it also raises Murphy's Law to new heights: If anything can go wrong online, it will. And when it goes wrong, educators' jobs and reputations are sometimes at risk. For example, there is the former student teacher in Pennsylvania who filed a federal…

P. L. Thomas provides a framework for discussing plagiarism and calls on us to avoid overly simplified policies. After considering various perspectives on intent and the purposes of documentation, Thomas advocates developing standard definitions and guidelines for plagiarism in the department or the classroom. We should also offer professional…

In this article I argue that women's book clubs are significant sites for learning, dialogue and the accumulation of cultural capital, and that research on North American women's book clubs should be expanded to include studies of such groups' consumption of texts by and about women living in the Middle East. Using insights from transnational…

This article describes a study which was designed to explore how sentence openers supported students' construction of arguments in an online learning environment. The study involved a group of students from a teacher training institute in Singapore. As part of the overall teacher training program, the students attended a course that equipped them…

This article explores the use of problem posing in the calculus classroom using investigative projects. Specially, four examples of student work are examined, each one differing in originality of problem posed. By allowing students to explore actual questions that they have about calculus, coming from their own work or class discussion, or…

Few studies on representations of social class in children's literature have been published in the United States. As a language arts teacher and media specialist in a high poverty school, the author describes children's novels that directly address social class and the subtopic of the labor movement and consider the continued relevance of social…

Collaborative learning is well suited to online learning environments built around threaded discussion. Research frameworks have developed around these practices providing methodological guidance for examining learning as a collective endeavor within the boundaries of a course. Understanding how to use the powerful learning techniques involved in…

This paper explores cultural production in online internationalised education. The analysis samples interactions in a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) unit offered online by an Australian university to a student group including enrolments through a Malaysian institution. Part of the curricular content was a consideration of how different…

Life Skills Education (LSE) is a novel promotional program that teaches generic life skills through participatory learning methods of games, debates, role-plays, and group discussion. Conceptual understanding and practicing of the skills occurs through experiential learning in a non-threatening setting. Such initiatives provide the adolescent with…

Talk-radio podcasts, such as "Absolutely Intercultural," which are not overtly pedagogical, can be much more than passive, extended listening practice. This paper describes two examples in which teachers have used the "Absolutely Intercultural" podcast and discusses the different levels of involvement possible with podcasts from listening to…