As part of a Howard Hughes Program for Innovation in Science Education grant at Iowa State University, a series of interdisciplinary graduate teaching assistant learning communities (TALC) were developed. The purpose of these communities was to create an environment to facilitate teaching assistants' pedagogical development and training to enhance…

Vee diagrams have been a metacognitive tool to help in learning the nature and structure of knowledge by reflecting on the scientific process and making knowledge much more explicit to learners during the practical work. This study aimed to assess pre-service science teachers' understanding some aspects of NOS by analyzing their reflections on the…

The sociocultural perspective of second language teacher education (L2TE) (e.g., Johnson, 2009), unlike the traditional one, values the importance of teacher development through actual teaching practice. Student teachers' (STs) initial beliefs should be challenged and reconstructed by taking into account particular teaching contexts. This…

This exploratory paper focuses on applying information and communication technologies (ICT) in educational settings, particularly in higher education. Based on qualitative data studying four courses in detail, the article starts by discussing educators' expectations associated with technological advances. It proceeds to discuss the concept of…

This qualitative case study examines one faculty member's approach toward instilling culturally immersive experiences into graduate curriculum. Participants completed course assignments designed to enhance their multicultural understanding and competence. Course assignments culminated in an immersive experience where students embodied an…

The "Australian Curriculum: Languages" is based on an intercultural orientation to the teaching and learning of languages. Reciprocal meaning-making, or interpreting self in relation to others as language users, is a key element in an intercultural orientation. The concept of reciprocating is embedded in the language-specific curricula…

During the last several years as a teacher educator mentoring new teachers, the author has worked on two programs of research that included ways of focusing early-career teachers on students and their learning. These research programs shed light on needs of new teachers and ways mentor questioning and processes of classroom inquiry can have an…

This exploratory study seeks to examine how the use of student-written blogs support student learning through the student perspective. The blogs were introduced to provide support in four distinct areas: as a medium for facilitating learning; as a medium for interactivity; as a medium for metacognitive thought and reflection; and as a learning…

Response-to-Intervention (RTI) strategies have been introduced across the country to assist students who demonstrate significant inabilities to achieve grade level competencies in major subject areas. However, despite its implementation in a southern California elementary school, 4th through 6th grade special education students with mild to…

Reflective learning, a practice carrying relatively high educational value, has been with us for some time. Its popularity has grown to the extent that it is often adopted unquestioningly by educational practitioners. However, there are some important questions to be asked in relation to reflective practice. In reality, its impact on improved and…

This current generation of students, known as the Millennial Generation, has a propensity toward multi-tasking and a history of structured and tightly filled days. Reflection may not be viewed as productive and as conducive to learning as other "tasks" and thus may be neglected. However, by employing a methodology (photography) that…

What picture of schoolwork do we obtain if we take a close look at everyday classroom activities and consider what students and teachers do and say about them? This is the basic focus of the study reported here which examines a teaching and learning practice called "own work" ("eget arbete") in the context of primary classroom…

The concept of reflective thinking as a precursor for incorporating critical thinking has been not been adequately researched. Most research has not given any effective strategies on how to incorporate these two concepts. There is a constant need to incorporate critical thinking into the classroom without much success. This study will attempt to…

In the two decades since the introduction of the Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (NCTM, 1991) describing effective mathematics instruction, researchers have found U.S. teachers still lack the ability to foster productive mathematical discourse. Three instructional practices are key to teachers' ability to support rich…

In this article I discuss the way Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and reflexivity is employed in a university environment to address the question of how we can most successfully transfer knowledge about the presumed Other into our own cultural space without reducing, fragmenting, and exoticising complex knowledge systems. My goal is to stimulate in…