To expand students' preparation for civic life, many teachers regularly engage students in discussions related to contentious issues. These discussions, however, typically restrict the range of communicative styles allowed and prioritizes disagreements between fixed and competing choices. Keith C. Barton & Li-Ching recommend that educators…

The relationship between learning and group work is often treated as self-evident, but the finer workings of this relationship require further study into the social organisation of group work. The aim of the research that forms the basis for the current article is to locate, describe, and gain new understanding of how peers organise their group…

Many classroom-observation instruments have been developed (e.g., Gleason et al., 2017; Nava et al., 2019; Sawada et al., 2002), but a very small number of studies published in refereed journals have rigorously examined the quality of the ratings and the instrument using measurement models. For example, Gleason et al. developed a mathematics…

Collaboration skills have been identified as an important educational outcome, not just as a means to enable learning mechanisms to be enacted, but also as a demonstrable skill of interest to assessment practitioners. In recent years, there has been an ambition to develop models of assessment that are underpinned by the collaborative process, and…

In this article, I reflect on how ways of reporting research as well as reviewing and commenting on submitted manuscripts could take new directions to promote progress in the discipline of developmental science. I argue for (a) attitudinal openness toward migratory impulses in relation to Stokes's quadrant model of science, (b) the…

In the last 10 years, gaming has evolved to the point that it is now being used as a learning medium to educate students in many different disciplines. The educational community has begun to explore the effectiveness of gaming as a learning tool and as a result two different ways of utilizing games for education have been created: Gamification and…

For most of the past decade, this author has studied union-management efforts to improve public education, and has witnessed extraordinary examples of teachers, union leaders, and administrators working together to improve teaching and learning. In this article, seven case studies on collaborative partnerships between teachers' unions and…

The most defining characteristic of MOOCs and other massive courses may be their scale. In their popular description, in the pedagogical and technological approach, in course operation, and in impact, the scale of the course is always foremost in mind. Beyond changes in scale, there are challenges and opportunities to adapt the new techniques in a…

Universities in Europe face a variety of reform initiatives, and university reform can be seen as a wicked problem that should be resolved through collaborative efforts. In Finland, there has been considerable resistance to proposed reforms, with university personnel complaining that they have not been heard. Students, on the other hand, seem…

Typically, school curriculum has been viewed through the lens of preparation for the workplace or higher education, both worthy objectives. However, this is not the only lens, and perhaps not even the most powerful one to use, if the goal is to optimize the educational system. "Curriculum on the Edge of Survival, 2nd Edition," attempts to define…

Over a 13-month period, the Schome Park Programme operated the first "closed" (i.e. protected) Teen Second Life project in Europe. The project organised diverse educational events that centred on use of a virtual world and an associated asynchronous forum and wiki. Students and staff together exploited the affordances of the environment…

This article is a conversation-analytic examination of situations where one speaker responds to another in a way that publicly exposes that the two speakers hold an incompatible position on a same matter, and in a way that claims that the respondent holds epistemic authority over the matter. These types of responsive actions (i.e.,…

We know that pupil talk is an integral part of the learning process. Previous research has not viewed "affective" engagement in a music composing task as a vehicle for developing higher order discourse skills. The aim of this study is to evaluate the significance of teacher questioning in encouraging quality dialogue with children during music…

This study investigates how structured Mediated Learning Experiences may improve peer-cooperative communication within problem-solving task exercises. Two groups (n = 22) of Year 8 students (mean age 13 +/- 5 months) were randomly selected to participate in this study. The study began with two one-hour sessions of activity-based problem-solving…

Children with autism spectrum disorder show deficits in social skills such as initiating conversation, responding in social situations, social problem-solving, and others. These deficits are targeted through the use of social skills interventions, some of which use a technology-based approach as a resource-efficient alternative to common forms of…