"Breakthrough Strategies" identifies effective strategies that faculty have used to help New Majority students--those from minority, immigrant, or disadvantaged backgrounds--build the necessary skills to succeed in college. As the proportion of New Majority students rises, there is increased attention to helping them gain access to…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the communicative strategies used by two effective first grade teachers whose students came from lower SES communities marked by a high incidence of school failure. One school was in Akko, Israel and one was in New Jersey in the US. In both settings, the teachers taught lessons in a language that was…

Conversational repairs are an important pragmatic language skill. We identified types of responses to requests for clarification and their frequencies in typically developing 4;0-6;0-year-old Jordanian children. This study was motivated by the fact that there are no Arabic data regarding this issue and by the limited range of forms of requests for…

The present study had two main goals: to explore performance differences in a task-based environment between face-to-face (FTF) and oral computer-mediated communication (OCMC) groups, and to investigate the relationship between trait-like willingness to communicate (WTC) and performance in the FTF and OCMC groups. Students from two intact…

Elwood Murray (1897-1988) was a pioneer in communication education. Beginning in the 1930s, he applied nontraditional methods in the speech classroom to encourage students to internalize and apply what they learned, and to view knowledge holistically. Drawing on the work of Kunkel, Moreno, Lewin, and Korzybski, Murray focused on developing skills…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the behavioral barriers to sustainable action in a campus community. Design/methodology/approach: This paper reports three different methodological approaches to the assessment of behavioral barriers to sustainable actions on a college campus. Focus groups and surveys were used to assess campus…

Electronic technologies are playing an increasing role in mediating patterns of social interaction within the classroom. This trend includes augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems like light-weight smart tablets. AAC in general has proven effective for many children in regard to decreasing challenging behavior, enabling…

The specific neuropsychological and sensory profile found in persons with autism spectrum disorders complicate dental procedures and as a result of this, most are treated under general anesthesia or unnecessary sedation. The main goal of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a short treatment and education of autistic and related…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe selected Caribbean extension officers' technology preferences and examine factors that may affect their technology preferences. Design/methodology/approach: The sample consisted of extension officers (N = 119) participating in professional development training sessions in Grenada, Belize and Saint…

This article examines the data obtained through a year-long ethnographic study of students from a Spanish primary school, and sheds light on their use of gender code networks during school recess. The results of this analysis confirm the conclusions on student interaction drawn by other studies (group segregation regarding age and gender and,…

The research reported here was focussed on accessing the perceptions of pre-service teachers regarding the critical factors which support highly effective learning in schools in the United Kingdom. Their perceptions were arranged into a taxonomy so that they can be used as a starting point for their reflections on the observations they make of…

Humor and language play have been recognized as important aspects of second language (L2) development. Qualitative studies that have documented the forms and functions of language play for adult and child L2 users have taken place largely in classroom settings. In order to gain a fuller understanding of such creative manipulations by L2 users, it…

Framed in theories of social semiotics, this descriptive multiple case study examined six middle school teachers' use of gestures during one school year as they each taught two different subject areas: earth science, language arts, mathematics, and/or social studies. The data, which included field notes and photographs from 354 lessons and 151…

Blogs are a useful teaching tool for improving student writing and increasing class interaction. However, most studies have looked at individual blogs rather than blogs maintained by a whole class. We introduced assignments involving participation in class blogs to four science communication classes with enrolments of between 15 and 36 students.…

Joachim Dattke describes a holistic approach to supporting the needs of the family when a child has a disability. The parent and child benefit from a two-pronged approach: working with doctors, psychologists, and therapists in clinic-based settings, and working with educators in schools and parent-child groups. He defines the importance of…