This study is concerned with interactional involvement and identity construction in a university seminar comprised of native and non-native English speaking students. Findings reveal that in their classroom interactions, these two groups of students take on and perceive others to take on identities that have little to do with their language status…

Distance education fosters new kinds of collaboration--some intended, others unintended--among students and between students and instructors in college classes. The authors report the incidental learning activity within a complex of asynchronous online and compressed desktop video courses at a mid-sized university. Learning to use technology and…

The author describes a Technologically Enhanced Language Learning program in Venezuela and how it helped improve high school EFL instruction. The author presents six challenges of teaching EFL and describes the context for the program. The author then provides a rationale for using multimedia in language teaching, based on theoretical frameworks.…

In this author's research, the question of whether it makes sense to think of writing primarily as a generic skill acquired increasing urgency as she gathered qualitative data for a study of the relationship between instructors' expectations in the design of writing assignments and the students' thinking as evidenced both in their essay responses…

The case study evaluated a distance education program offered by a land-grant university agricultural college. The study used Holmberg's and Moore's theoretical frameworks of didactic conversation and multiple interactions to determine the importance of interaction on the efficacy of distance learning. The mixed methods approach used an original…

This paper is the result of a research project that set out to document a group of adolescent musicians in a rural Australian secondary school as they wrote and performed their own music. The processes they developed are reflective of a cooperative approach to group composition where upwards of 21 students composed and "jammed" their way…

In this exploratory case study we look at student media production to find out what students know and have learned about the media through production work. We used a media education conceptual framework developed by Dick as a means of describing the day to day media learning of a group of ten students, four girls and six boys, producing a video…

While problem-based learning (PBL) has been found to be effective with gifted and average students (Hmelo-Silver, 2004), little is known about its impact on students with special needs. This study examines the perceptions of middle-school students with mild, moderate, and severe disabilities and of their teachers regarding the value of…

This study employed problem-based learning (PBL) for project work in a Year 9 biology class. The purpose of the study was to investigate (a) how self-generated problems and questions directed students in their learning, (b) how students reacted to this instructional approach, and (c) the problems that they encountered. Students formulated problems…

This paper considers the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to enable students to access the curriculum in inclusive classrooms. The research considers the latest trends regarding promotion of the use of ICT in education in Australia and then considers the outcome from the perspective of one state, that of Western Australia.…

The new Science and Technology Curriculum Framework recently issued in Taiwan advocates the teaching of integrated science and technology with greater emphasis on basic skills. Science teachers are not used to teach in this way, they need different abilities and skills in order to do so. Using various effective professional development strategies,…

This paper reports the findings from a pilot study that investigated the uses of computer-mediated communication in an educational psychology course for pre-service teachers that focused on problem-based learning via CD-ROM-based case analysis. Thirty-nine pre-service teachers and eight practicing teachers participated in the development of an…

The term "doing hair" is utterly familiar. However, while the term can refer to simple acts of combing, brushing, washing, and styling hair, in the culture of adolescent African-American girls, doing hair is a social practice that represents power, creativity, and sometimes popularity. This article describes a three-month afterschool…

Since the first edition was published in 1994, Rethinking Our Classrooms has sold over 180,000 copies. This revised and expanded edition includes new essays on: (1) science and environmental education; (2) immigration and language; (3) military recruitment; (4) teaching about the world through mathematics; and (5) gay and lesbian issues. Creative…

The concept of a community of practice (CoP) is prevalent in several venues for teachers' professional development, especially in online environments. However, there are few descriptive accounts that effectively represent a CoP in a manner that will be of use to other designers. In order to illuminate potential difficulties which may arise when…