This study examined the discourse of preservice teacher candidates in order to better identify those practices and experiences by which they shape their identity and conceptualize their role in teaching. The study's purpose was to find out (a) how secondary preservice teacher candidates conceptualize the practice of their teaching, (b) what…

In this article, the author aims to propose an analytic method through which composition students and others might discover and understand the ecological complexities of prevailing environmental terminology that create "wicked problems." Through this method, students engage in "discursive ecology" by exploring the connections…

The aims of this article are to address how learning is constituted and can be studied as a phenomenon in interaction and to discuss how teaching and learning are related. Theoretically, the article argues for and discusses constraints and affordances for relating sociocultural understandings of learning as changing participation to "conversation…

This article examines interactions from tertiary-level foreign languages classes in which students challenge the heteronormative construction of their sexual identity. These interactions are triggered by questions that potentially reference students' real-world identities but which attribute a heteronormative identity to the questions' recipients.…

This paper describes a corpus-based approach to teaching and learning spoken grammar for English for Academic Purposes with reference to Bhatia's (2002) multi-perspective model for discourse analysis: a textual perspective, a genre perspective and a social perspective. From a textual perspective, corpus-informed instruction helps students identify…

This paper presents situated learning as a theoretical framework for conceptualising new ways to approach science education. Key constructs associated with this framework, including communities of practice, Discourse and identity, are introduced. I advance an argument to develop classroom communities of practice based on engaged citizenship…

This study examines the racial discourses of six and seven year old Puerto Rican children participating in small group literature circles over one academic year. The main research question is "How do Puerto Rican young children in a multiage classroom construct race through dialogue within the figured worlds of literature circles?" This study…

Metaphor analysis is based on the belief that metaphor is a powerful linguistic device, because it extends and encapsulates knowledge about the familiarity and unfamiliarity. Metaphor analysis has been adopted in the educational discourse. The paper categorizes the previous relevant research into 3: interactions between learners and institutions,…

This study was originally designed to explore the impact of a distributed approach to developing curriculum leadership among schoolteachers. Previous papers have focused on reporting evidence of teacher learning in the process of engaging teachers in various types of curriculum decision-making in an innovation project based on interview data. This…

This is a critical time for the science education community as we embark on the creation and implementation of new national science standards. The purpose of this essay is to offer insight into how the language of curriculum standards, including that found in state science standards in the United States over the past 15 years, has posed barriers…

Given complaints about preparation of international students for their writing-intensive courses, a director of first-year writing and an undergraduate researcher at a Midwestern research university conducted a needs assessment based on Kaufman's model. Instruments used included a survey, interviews, and analysis of commentary on sample papers.…

This paper brings task-based language teaching (TBLT) curriculum development principles into the blended learning context, presenting processes and outcomes from a project to develop a task-based thematic unit--asking and giving directions--in a hybrid web-based university-level class focused on listening and speaking skills in Mandarin Chinese.…

The practice of a critical pedagogy was the impetus for our involvement in an urban in-district master's program with a mission that included developing a "critical praxis" for all participants. Early on we were challenged to rethink our stance as "critical educators" when teachers resisted what we intended to be "empowering" course practices,…

Background: Studies on heteronormativity in PE either appear to have explored the experiences of and conditions for non-heterosexual students, or adopt a retrospective point of view. Further, the relation between heteronormativity and movement and how movement activities embody social norms and values related to gender and sexuality has not been…

In a teaching context fraught with conflicts on religious and ethnic backgrounds, I decide as a teacher researcher to address these issues with Israeli-Arab middle school students in my EFL classroom. Picture books on religious diversity and minority issues are used as a springboard for providing spaces for students to discuss these issues orally,…