Diane Relf was concerned by what felt like an unbridgeable gulf between Year 7's vocabulary and comprehension, and her aspirations both for their inclusion in history and their later academic success. As a subject leader without the benefit of any history-specific training at the start of her career, she embarked on a journey of intensive reading…

Using digital technology effectively in schools requires profound changes in traditional teaching and learning activities. Pedagogical innovations often start small-scale and developing good ideas into shared practice across schools is challenging in many ways, especially if the innovation requires "second-order change," i.e. challenges…

The authors share design principles from a middle school social studies unit that explored questions of local history and engaged students in extended work with complex texts. The unit involved constructing a problem space for students to explore multiple historical texts. Within that problem space, students had opportunities to develop focal…

This article approaches written argumentation as a concept of promoting geographical literacy. It is argued that student-centered peer feedback is an effective method with which to improve individual students' argumentative texts. This research uses a case-study design, which analyzed how high school students in different pairs improve their…

This research investigated the impact of Scientix STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) on female candidate teachers' attitudes towards STEM education, their semantic perceptions of STEM discipline scopes, specifying their needs in writing STEM projects, their learning outcomes from education, and the difficulties they face in the…

With increasing emphasis by policymakers, there has been an increase in access to technology within schools across the globe. However, recent survey findings suggest that teachers may not be integrating technology into their writing instruction in meaningful and effective ways. Variability in technology integration can be attributed to teacher…

Writing in science can be challenging for all learners, and it is especially so for students with cognitive or language-based learning difficulties. Yet, we know very little about how to support students with learning disabilities (LD) or who are English learners (EL) when asked to write for authentic purposes during science instruction.…

University bilingual science courses are on the rise because of the internationalisation of higher education. These courses are legitimate and desirable scenarios for the promotion of bilingual written scientific argumentation (BWSA) as part of bilingual scientific literacy. The problem is that very little evidence is available on how to foster…

This article presents a qualitative study of the differential uptake of SFL-inspired metalanguage and SFL-based pedagogy by two senior secondary history teachers in Australia. The teachers were involved in design-based research aimed at improving disciplinary writing for high stakes examinations. While both attended the same training seminar and…

The purpose of this study was to implement information literacy (IL) into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) writing courses at an urban community college, investigate if students' information literacy (IL) skills were improved through library one-shot instruction, and determine if there was an association between IL skills…

In the present study, we developed a chatbot that helps teachers to deliver writing instructions. By working with the chatbot, the post-secondary writers developed a thesis statement for their argumentative essay outlines, and the chatbot helped the writers to refine their peer review feedback. We conducted a preliminary analysis of the effect of…

The elementary grades provide a rich context for literacy and science learning. Reading, writing, and talk support students' conceptual understanding of and engagement with science. The authors provide theoretical and research evidence to support the teaching of five instructional strategies that can facilitate literacy and science learning in…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the relationship between science writing and student science achievement and how teachers implement the writing strategy claim, evidence, and reasoning (CER) in their science classrooms. Writing is a critical tool for scientific literacy and student achievement. We must teach our students to…

The purpose of the study was to assess the volume of academic vocabulary in elementary grades disciplinary textbooks. Academic vocabulary was examined in a corpus of best-selling elementary grades textbooks in three disciplinary areas--science, mathematics, and social studies. Academic words in texts were determined through automated procedures…

Analytical reading and writing are embedded in a disciplinary approach to history instruction and present opportunities to extend students' literacy practices. U.S. educators and researchers have come to rely on the Document-Based Question (DBQ) to assess and develop students' historical knowledge and argument writing. However, this task has been…