To a large extent, the quality of classroom communication hinges on the teacher's ability to tune in and respond to emerging students' voices, which requires the astuteness and agility to hear layered messages, offer tailored assistance, and follow students' leads. It requires responding to multiple contingencies in real time. One important…

This paper reviews five ways to increase the effectiveness of instructional video and one way not to use instructional video. People learn better from an instructional video when the onscreen instructor draws graphics on the board while lecturing (dynamic drawing principle), the onscreen instructor shifts eye gaze between the audience and the…

This paper places classroom discourse and interaction right at the heart of the teaching and learning process. It is built on the argument that high quality talk between the teacher and student(s) provides a fertile ground for an active, highly collaborative and cognitively stimulating learning process leading to improved learning outcomes. High…

Helping students generalise mathematical ideas is an essential component of teaching and learning of mathematics (Lannin, Ellis, Elliott & Zbiek, 2011). However, it can be challenging for primary teachers to assess and promote generalisation. Because generalisation is an essential part of mathematics instruction, the authors highlight the…

This paper reports on research into the practice of learning rounds in Scotland. Learning rounds are a form of collaborative professional development for teachers based on the instructional rounds practice developed in the USA. In recent years learning rounds have gained high profile official support within education in Scotland. The research…

An essential element in teaching children to effectively comprehend text is the use of teacher-led think-alouds. The overarching objective of this study was to explore how to better prepare early career teachers to conduct think-alouds in their classrooms. Data from 31 teachers consisted of (1) questionnaires, (2) lesson plans, (3) lesson…

This article describes a flipped classroom activity that requires students to integrate research and audience analysis. The activity uses Twitter as a data source. In the activity, students identify a sample, collect customer tweets, and analyze the language of the tweets in an effort to construct knowledge about an audience's values, needs, and…

Discussion forums are a primary tool for interactions in the online classroom. Discussions are a critical part of the learning process for students, and instructor facilitation should reflect this importance. Effective instructor discussion facilitation encourages students, provides evidence and analysis and links the discussion to subsequent…

This article provides an example of a social studies lesson from Turkish educational context in order to facilitate comparison with examples of social studies lessons from other parts of the world. This lesson was recorded in a 7th grade class at a middle school in one of the metropolitan neighborhoods in Istanbul. According to the current…

A year-long inquiry was conducted in response to the following questions: How does the relationship and teaching practice of a new co-teaching partnership evolve throughout the course of a school year? How can a consultant support the work of a new co-teaching partnership? The work of a general education and special education teacher in their…

Many educational researchers across the United States have found that inquiry-based learning (IBL) supports the development of deep, meaningful content knowledge. However, integrating IBL into classroom practice has been challenging, in part because of contrasting conceptualizations and practices across educational fields. In this article, we (a)…

Oral communication skills are essential for engineers today and, as they are included in accreditation criteria of educational programmes, their teaching and evaluation deserve attention. However, concrete aspects as to what should be taught and evaluated in relation to oral communication skills have not been sufficiently established. In this…

Communicative approach has become popular in ELT in recent years. Good teacher talk lays focus on how effectively it could promote genuine communication in the classroom. In this essay, communicative teacher talk is studied, and its features are explored based on authentic classroom transcripts, and a summary of the existing problems is provided.

In this paper, we share two blended learning approaches used at the National Institute of Education in Singapore. We have been using these two approaches in the last twelve years in many courses ranging from the diploma to graduate programs. For the first blended learning approach, we integrated one asynchronous communication tool with face to…