This conceptual paper sets out the community-of-inquiry framework from a distributed perspective. It proposes that considering teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence from a distributed perspective allows the broadening of the presences to consider the way in which participants, content and tools maintain and advance these…

Teaching conceptions in higher education, or so-called academics' conceptions of teaching (ACTs), are essential in informing teaching behaviors and influencing students' learning. Consequently, several attempts have been made since the 1990s to understand what ACTs represent and how they can be developed towards student-centered teaching. However,…

The spectrum of Teaching Styles (TS) provides a solid theoretical foundation for teaching Physical Education. It is common for teachers to use directive styles that do not meet program requirements. This is further accentuated in the case of dance, to the detriment of the development of emotional and cognitive factors. This study investigates the…

Visual literacy is defined as competencies that enable an individual to understand, interpret, use, generate, and evaluate visual images or messages. The role of visual literacy in teaching mathematics is to enhance learners' understanding of complex concepts, accommodate their needs, promote their logical and critical thinking, and develop their…

Orchestrating inquiry-based science learning in the classroom is a complex undertaking. It requires fitting the culture of the classroom with the teacher's teaching and inquiry practices. To understand the interactions between these variables in relation to student learning, we conducted an investigation in two different classroom settings to…

Field note-taking skills are fundamental in the geosciences but are rarely explicitly taught. In a mixed-method study of an introductory geothermal field lesson, we characterize the content and perceptions of students' note-taking skills to derive the strategies that students use in the field. We collected several data sets: observations of the…

The literature indicates that teacher educators have a responsibility to prepare new teachers philosophically and practically as reflective "researchers" who are in the habit of systematic, active, and goal-directed problem-posing and are attentive to the processes in which they are immersed (Braun & Crumpler, 2004; Cochran-Smith-Lytle, 1999;…

Students preferentially take in and process information in different ways: by seeing and hearing, reflecting and acting, reasoning logically and intuitively, analyzing and visualizing. Teaching methods also should vary accordingly. How much a student can learn is also determined by the compatibility of the student's learning styles and the…

Within the field of second language teacher education (SLTE), narrative has largely functioned as a vehicle for teacher inquiry, based on the assumption that such inquiry will ultimately bring about productive change in teachers and their teaching practices. Less attention has been paid to documenting what this change looks like or how engagement…

This article develops and applies an analytic matrix for searching and using Web 2.0 resources along a learning continuum based on learning styles. This continuum applies core concepts of cognitive psychology, which places an emphasis on internal processes, such as motivation, thinking, attitudes, and reflection. A pilot study found that access to…

This article discusses a three-step method that was used in a college calculus course. The three-step method was developed to help students understand the course material and transition to be more independent learners. In addition, the method helped students to transfer concepts from short-term to long-term memory while lowering cognitive load.…

The increasing ubiquity of PowerPoint in the university classroom raises complex questions about pedagogy and the creation of dynamic and effective learning environments. Though much of the sociological teaching literature has focused on engagement and active learning, very little of this work has addressed the presence of PowerPoint in sociology…

This article discusses how amusing mistakes can make for serious language instruction. The notion that close analysis of language errors can yield insight into how one thinks and learns seems fundamentally obvious. Yet until relatively recently, language errors were primarily treated as indicators of learner deficiency rather than opportunities to…

This research report is based on a study designed to explicitly test Sigel's "Distancing Hypothesis" by examining the relationship between a cluster of seven maternal behaviors related to "distancing" and representation in a total of 60, 3- and 4-year-old boys. The boys were administered three tasks (in their nursery school) which measured…

As an experienced classroom teacher, the author was dismayed at what seemed a total lack of engagement by Singaporean theology students. To determine class dynamics, or lack thereof, the instructor discussed his situation with colleagues and investigated the nature of his students' preferred learning styles. Finding that his students were visual…