Supporting undergraduate students with their academic literacies has recently been a major focus in higher education in the UK. This paper explores the value of tutor mediation in the context of academic writing development among undergraduate business studies students in open and distance learning, following the dynamic assessment (DA) approach…

The number of students with disabilities arriving on college and university campuses is increasing. Of those students reporting a disability, over half of them state they have a learning disability. Unlike high school, the burden is on the student in college to demonstrate the need for services and communicate this need to the institution in a…

This report provides evidence of the influence of a tutorial "communication game" on fifth graders' generative understanding of the integer number line. Students matched for classroom and pretest score were randomly assigned to a tutorial (n = 19) and control group (n = 19). The tutorial group students played a 13-problem game in which…

This paper uncovers the dynamics of the twin processes of the construction of identity and the contextualisation of learning in adult literacy education by documenting the spatial practices of students and tutors. The paper mobilises the concepts of localising and globalising activities to make two interrelated arguments. Firstly, analysis of…

High school graduation requirements are becoming increasingly demanding. In addition to meeting academic benchmarks, some school districts have added performance requirements such as oral presentations to their criteria for earning a high school diploma. This type of requirement may present an additional challenge for students with learning…

A movement known as the Universities of the Third Age (U3As) provides educational, cultural and social services for mature-age people in Australia and internationally. This paper focuses on the educational courses run by U3As and discusses two basic questions: What are the expectations of learners who enrol in these classes? and How can tutors…

The recent National Students Survey showed that feedback to students was an ongoing problem in Higher Education. This paper reports on the extension of our past research into the provision of automated feedback for objective testing. In the research presented here, the system has been further developed for marking practical and essay questions and…

In this research study the authors analyzed the effectiveness of content-area education students tutoring adolescents and documented changes in the attitudes of the education students over time. Tutors tested the reading comprehension of both the students they tutored (treatment group) and students they did not (comparison group). The authors used…

This collaborative research project sought to determine the attributes, skills and expertise/knowledge needed by distance language teachers. The first phase of the project explored tutor perspectives using discussion groups, questionnaires, interviews and a yoked-subject technique. Statements and categories of expertise were identified, elaborated…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differential impact of two field experiences, tutoring and observing, on preservice teachers' reading self-efficacy and content knowledge. Participants completed an adapted, reading version of The Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES). Results showed that both groups reported growth in reading…

Feedback is central to pedagogic theory, and if feedback is to be effective, students need to engage with it and apply it at some point in the future. However, student dissatisfaction with feedback--as evidenced in the National Student Survey--suggests that there are problems which limit student engagement with feedback, such as their perception…

This article offers an ethnographic case study of two Adult Basic Education (ABE) teachers' characteristics and their literacy instruction. It draws on the New Literacy Studies tradition and used ethnographic tools (in-depth interviews, classroom observation and the think-aloud protocol) to explore the characteristics of two ABE teachers and…

With a revised protocol for interviewing new tutors, Wawasan Open University (WOU) has continued its tutor training program for the second semester of operations. Having experienced working with the first cohort of tutors for semester 1, year 2007 it is evident that we have more confidence and appreciation for tutor training to support WOU's…

As a result of enrollment expansion, increasing numbers of students are entering into medical school in China. This combined with a shortage of teachers, means that the learning environment typically consists of a large classroom setting with traditional lecture-based learning (LBL) as the major mode to teaching and learning. In this article, we…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of students with intellectual disabilities gaining access into a university setting, specifically Trinity College Dublin. The topic is important as gaining access to a university setting for students with intellectual disabilities is not commonplace. The study was qualitative in design…