Students who engage in the writing process learn to write. Period. And yet many teachers, including Lain when she was a beginning teacher, don't know how to make the time for it, how to structure it, and how to evaluate it. Here, Lain offers us the help we need by focusing on the teaching tools for introducing students to this format, the…

Science centers can engage students; accommodate different learning styles and individual interests; help students become independent and confident learners; and encourage social skills among students. In this article, the author worked with third-grade students as they completed activities at learning centers during a week-long unit on simple…

This article elaborates a model for understanding pedagogy in online educational forums. The model identifies four key components. Intellectual engagement describes the foreground cognitive processes of collaborative learning. Communication processes operating in the background accumulate an ever richer store of shared understandings that enable…

This longitudinal study compared business faculty's use of information technology in distance education as well as their perception of the technology's impact on their productivity and technology preferences between 2000 and 2006. Data were collected from 81 professors in 2000 and 140 professors in 2006 at AACSB-accredited business colleges across…

Classroom discussion is often underutilized by teachers and students alike; however, it remains a viable pedagogical choice for actively engaging students in learning. The combination of Book Club discussions and intentionally designed simple strategies as tools in resource rooms or co-taught general education classrooms may increase the speaking…

The aim of the present study was to investigate into the critical thinking skills of late adolescent Turkish university students. The subjects of the study were the 39 students from the Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance, Faculty of Education, Uludag University. Two separate discussion groups, each including five students, were…

Instructor persona in online discussion may set the tone for a variety of course outcomes. Instructors establish persona via both presence (amount of instructor posts) and position (interaction relative to those in the student role). In this paper, three online classes were studied using positioning theory as a grounding framework to elicit ways…

Emergent leadership was examined in 12 discussion groups in 4 fourth-grade classrooms. Children's leadership moves were coded from transcripts of 10 free-flowing, open-format discussions of each of the 12 groups. The transcripts encompassed 26,000 turns for speaking, including 22,000 child turns of which 1,700 were judged to serve one of five…

Over the past 20 years, teacher educators have increasingly turned to case-based instruction with Pre-service, novice, and even experienced teachers. However, advocates of case-based teaching rarely point out the many challenges that might detract from effective case-based instruction. I briefly outline some of the more obvious challenges facing…

Making connections is an emerging education theme of the 21st century. Science teachers are encouraged to connect new learning with prior knowledge, learning with student interests and experience, and classroom activities with the history and nature of science. Strategies that facilitate these connections enrich and enhance instruction. In this…

The case study examined two groups of grade 7 students as they engaged in four inquiry phases: posing a question and collecting, analyzing, and representing data. Previous studies reported analyses of statistical reasoning on a single inquiry phase. Our goal was to identify the modes of statistical reasoning displayed during group discussions in…

Many teachers fear that their chances to influence decisions about their profession are eroding. Principals must change this perception so that teachers feel empowered as school leaders. Drawing on the work of communications consultant William Isaacs, Glover discusses how principals can engage in communication that encourages teacher leadership by…

Conducted to evaluate the efficacy of teen counselors in school drug prevention programs, this study utilizes the following as evaluation criterion: (1) interviews with school faculty and teen counselors; (2) observations of teen counselor meetings and sessions with middle school students; and (3) documentation such as teen counselor training and…

As a society, the United States is becoming increasingly concerned with the far-reaching consequences of childhood aggression and youth violence. This book offers a way in which educators can talk to K-12 students about violence. The step-by-step approach enables students to talk about experiences with anger, violence, threats, loss of control,…

An instructor's teaching practices have been influenced by Edward T. Hall's theory in "Beyond Culture," which begins with the notion that "what is known least well and is therefore in the poorest position to be studied is what is closest to oneself," the "unconscious patterns that control us." This wisdom has been…