This paper describes how early childhood teachers' incorporation of pauses raises the quality of talk-in-interaction during play-based mathematics activities. Responses of both children and teachers are shown to be more contingent and expansive when conversations include protracted pauses than during interactions in which pauses are largely…

Reports on a study of the interactions of students in Australian high schools and was designed to focus on "target students" who monopolized whole class interactions. Students who were asked by teachers to be target students tended to have higher formal reasoning ability and achievement levels than the other students. (TW)