Many online classes use synchronous communication--chat--as a way to conduct class discussion. However, chat can quickly disintegrate into nonproductive chaos if allowed to flow unchecked. The tools provided by course management systems such as Blackboard provide one solution to this problem by allowing instructors to grant or deny access to…

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…

The use of English as an international language of science (EILS) is by now well documented; depending on one's orientation, English may be seen as a neutral "lingua franca" or it may be seen more insidiously as a dominating and overpowering force. This paper explores these co-existing roles of EILS through various perspectives. It begins by…

This article first explores the characteristics of professional learning communities (PLCs) identified in the research literature. Second, it examines the staff and student outcomes derived from the implementation and integration of a PLC in a K-12 school or a university. Third, it provides suggestions for school leaders about creating and…

Advocates of computer-mediated instruction have pointed to the potential of online teaching for facilitating students' active learning behavior. Small-group online discussion can have a role in meaningful student interaction. Yet, what is less known are the conditions under which students actually engage in interaction in online discussion groups…

Richard Gambino's "Blood of My Blood" was of help to a writing instructor coming to terms with the role that her Italian ethnicity played in her life and education. Gambino's understanding of the inner tensions experienced by an individual who must negotiate between two cultures has helped the instructor in teaching working-class and…

A study examined from a feminist poststructuralist perspective the discourses available in a classroom using a critical pedagogy, based on a belief that teaches need to make it possible for their students to question the social world constructed in texts. The teacher of an Australian junior primary classroom (with students age five to eight) took…

The intercollegiate forensics community appears less receptive to women than it is to men. Women report a variety of positive and negative gender-based experiences in intercollegiate forensics. Positive experiences tend to include women into the intercollegiate forensics community or to allow women to include others in the community. Negative…

Generally speaking English department faculty respond very differently when reading freshman writing than when reading most other kinds of writing. Mina Shaughnessy has pointed out that "ordinary readers" try to understand what they are reading, but the writing teacher, "like a lawyer examining a client's document for all possible ambiguities and…

The current public debate between the images of the smiling war hero and of the grimacing Vietnam veteran provide opportunities to define two discourse communities that manifest themselves in students' written discourse. These can be seen as akin to the first American jeremiads, which were Puritan treatises written by seventeenth century religious…

This book explores the ways in which teachers can use critical literacy as a framework for teaching and learning. The book shares the varied experiences of its authors as they attempt to put a critical edge on students' classroom discussions about books and other texts, and thus create spaces for critical literacy in the K-6 classroom. Each…

This paper examines the possibility of technology supporting and facilitating the organization and development of knowledge in a particular field through critical discourse. The following three examples of discourse-structuring technologies have been investigated to determine whether selected software might support critical discourse to capture…

Investigates how classroom communities were created to support students' writing in two contrasting grade-10 English classrooms: one in a low-income urban school with a diverse population, one in a middle-class suburban school. Analyzes class discussions to see how they functioned in creating community. Portrays writing in both classrooms as…

Explores the culture of a summer writing course (at the University of Texas) for first-year ethnic minority students that is designed to help induct them gradually into the academic culture and improve retention rate. Observes and records behavior and discourses of the class's African American students. Focuses on learning strategies displayed in…

Examines rhetorical processes which convert experience into social forms of community. Compares Robert Scott's notion of rhetoric as dynamic with the rhetorical concept of "spectacle." Explores "the dynamic spectacle" as a rhetorical document of community building. Examines Black America's reaction to the spectacle of Liberty…