This article presents an adaptation of established qualitative research methods for online focus groups by using the "Disqus" website-based commenting platform as a medium for discussion among doctoral and early-career academic learners. Facilities allowing Internet users to comment on the content of web pages are increasingly popular on…

This study compared conversations among groups of teachers of high school geometry that had been elicited by a representation of instruction (either a video or an animation) and facilitated with an open-ended agenda. All artifacts used represented instruction scenarios that departed from what, according to prior work, had been hypothesized as…

This paper presents an exploratory analysis of treatment-control differences in the quality of classroom interactions in 4th through 7th grade urban classrooms. Word Generation (WG) is a research-based academic language program for middle school students designed to teach novel vocabulary and literacy through language arts, math, science, and…

South Africa is a highly mobile country characterized by historical displacements and contemporary mobilities, both social and demographic. Getting to grips with diversity, dislocation, relocation and anomie, as well as pursuing aspirations of mobility, is part of people's daily experience that often takes place on the margins of conventional…

Drawing from a social constructionist perspective to written scholarly communication, this paper argues that training in academic writing for students in higher education especially in second language contexts should go beyond emphasis on grammatical correctness and paragraphing strategies, and also focus on the rhetorical character of academic…

The research we report on was conducted from our computer desktops. We have not met the people we have studied; they are part of what Eichhorn described as a "textual community", gathered around the threads of online conversations associated with a website servicing the needs of English-language speakers in Germany. The thread in…

Thanks to the recent developments in the theory of academic discourse analysis, it is now increasingly accepted that negotiation of academic knowledge is intimately related to the social practices of academic communities. To underpin this position and to reveal some of the ways this is achieved, this article analyzes a relatively wide spectrum of…

This study compared the characteristics of second graders' mathematical writing between an intervention and comparison group. Two six-week Project M2 units were implemented with students in the intervention group. The units position students to communicate in ways similar to mathematicians, including engaging in verbal discourse where they…

In an effort to improve our understanding of intellectual discussion in the undergraduate seminar and how it may be enhanced, three interdisciplinary discussion-based classes taken by primarily first-year students at a liberal arts college were studied ethnographically. Specifically, this article explores the struggles experienced by the students…

This study used critical dialogue within a teacher preparation program to address the dilemma of preparing preservice teachers for educational arenas in which they will interface with students who are socially and economically disadvantaged. Using Critical Race Theory as a lens, the study addressed the following research questions: What were the…

The researchers examined transcripts of comments made and dialogues engaged in by children, teachers and student teaching assistants during a 10-week enrichment programme for gifted and talented children aged 7-9 years. Attempts were made to match these utterances with the programme's aims and aspirations as expressed in a promotional document.…

It has been common to use video records of instruction in teacher professional development, but participants have rarely been encouraged to evaluate teachers and students' actions in those records, allegedly because evaluation deters from the development of a professional discourse. In this study, we inspected teachers' online discussions of…

In this article we explore similarities and differences between two school subjects, Norwegian and mathematics, taking a phenomenological perspective and a didactic meta-perspective (literacy perspective). Our argument is presented on three levels which together build on the perspective of meta-language. First we consider the level of discourse…

Much research has examined how different patterns of social interaction shape language learners' interactional roles (e.g., collaborative, dominant, passive) in peer-to-peer conversations. However, little or no research has investigated the co-construction of such roles in multiparty, online task-based dialogues within the framework of discursive…

This article seeks to promote the generation of a discourse of the postmodern community work professional. A shared discourse will lead, we propose to shared capital. We argue that there is a tension between the modern and postmodern for those of us engaged in the profession of community learning and development (CL&D). We need to value…