Recent scholarship in multiliteracies-oriented pedagogies has advocated for greater attention to fostering 'textual thinking', understood as forms of literacy that consider the complexities of semiotic choices made by authors, and their underlying meanings, rhetorical purposes, and cultural contexts. This kind of engagement with texts calls upon…

While it is well established that pedagogies purposefully linking subject matter to students' cultural contexts and prior knowledge can help students learn subject matter, little is known about practices for so doing in undergraduate biology courses enrolling substantial numbers of racially, culturally, and otherwise diverse students. This study…

Training and learning are the personal process in which individuals interact with social and cultural contexts. Immigrant trainees bring their early educational and life experiences into training classrooms, and their learning is strongly affected by their prior socialization and socio-cultural experiences. Therefore, it is necessary to provide…

Video podcasts have become one of the fastest developing trends in learning and teaching. The study explored the effect of the presenting mode of educational video podcasts on the learning process and learning outcomes. Prior to viewing a video podcast, the 94 Chinese undergraduates participating in the study completed a demographic questionnaire…

This article explores what the "intercultural turn" might mean in the case of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). The discussion is contextualised in what has been termed the "expanding circle" of English and focuses on an English as a foreign language (EFL) class in a Mexican university, a context where…

We report on efforts to design the "Collaborative Workshop Physics" (CWP) instructional strategy to deliver the first interactive engagement (IE) physics course at Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research (KU), United Arab Emirates (UAE). To our knowledge, this work reports the first calculus-based, introductory mechanics…

Student diversity is a major topic in education today. Diversity will not be going away any time soon. Even over thirty years ago, educators were beginning to discuss the subject of diversity and multiculturalism. In fact, during the 1970s and 1980s, the word, "diversity" was seldom used at all. The term "multiculturalism" was…

The theme of this special issue is timely as the world becomes increasingly flat and globally connected (Friedman, 2007). By focusing on an international perspective in problem-based learning (PBL), it puts culture squarely in the center, whether it is a national or disciplinary culture. The articles in this special issue represent Thailand, South…

Effectively teaching mathematics to speakers of other languages requires teachers to recognize, validate, honor, and support the math that these students have already learned before entering a U.S. classroom. To do so, they must become aware of procedures, types of math instruction, and students' current performance levels. They should be…

This article reports on the research whose specific objective is to improve student retention in mathematics included in the first-year ICT study programme by means of improving teaching methods, with an emphasis on gender issues. Two principal reasons for this research are, first, the fact that first-year mathematics courses are often viewed as…

Despite suggestions for incorporating students' experiences into school math lessons, mathematics education seems to be the last bastion of formalism. This paper reports on a sociocultural study of the use of students' personal experiences in early childhood elementary mathematics lessons. This study documents the use of students' personal…

A project targeted teachers in the Top End of Australia's Northern Territory, who faced unique difficulties in their literacy and numeracy practice. Cross-cultural training and education were affected by isolation and geographic distance, often an absence of professional support and development, and limited access to resources. The project offered…