Both the Common Core Standards for Literacy and the College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards underscore the importance of classroom discussion for the development of high-level literacy and subject-matter knowledge. Yet, discussion remains stubbornly absent in social studies classrooms, which tend toward rote…

This article details a four-faceted approach we developed to help structure discourse about topics in partisan arenas, many of which intersect with issues of equity and social justice. The article's narrative centers on challenging and emotionally charged discussions that unfolded in a classroom management class in our teacher preparation program…

Digital Storytelling offers many advantages for language learning, especially within a project-based framework. In this article, the use of Digital Micro-Narratives is proposed as particularly useful for second language learners at the novice level. As a sub-genre of Digital Storytelling, Digital Micro-Narratives focus more on frequently updated…

Responsive teaching occurs when teachers take up and "respond" to their students' ideas during instruction (J. L. Pierson, 2008). Although responsive teaching is gaining recognition as an effective strategy for encouraging student learning, few methods of analysis are capable of characterizing the different ways in which teachers take up…

This article draws from ethnographic data produced inside mathematics teacher education in Sweden. It explores and makes visible the ongoing process of education during workshops in information and communication technology (ICT) laboratory contexts in which student teachers were working with spreadsheet applications on the computer. The main…

Most teachers will endorse "standards" of authentic instruction, including deep knowledge, higher order thinking, substantive conversation, and connections to the world beyond the classroom. When it comes to putting such endorsements into practice, however, they too often accept a standardized view of content that is dull and doctrinaire and…

This study examines the impact of "Disaggregate Instruction" on students' science learning. "Disaggregate Instruction" is the idea that science teaching and learning can be separated into conceptual and discursive components. Using randomly assigned experimental and control groups, 49 fifth-grade students received web-based…

Service-learning, an increasingly popular pedagogical strategy in higher education, has been largely ignored in the scholarship of literature teaching. Because political and social activities are inextricably linked with aesthetic and intellectual activities, literary texts and community service can work in complementary ways to inform students'…

In this article, Bardige and Segal discuss how teachers can help a toddler's language and literacy development through conversation. They suggest an array of tactics, from asking young children open-ended, intellectually challenging questions to going beyond the here and now when carrying on a conversation. Research has shown that the practice of…