The public has developed a powerful voice over the past two decades, calling for involvement in school decision making and creating the conditions for schools to pay attention to engaging the public in more meaningful ways. Lessons for all schools can be learned from charter school efforts to engage their public effectively. This article presents…

The construct of enabling school structure is empirically analyzed in this qualitative study of high schools. First, the theoretical underpinning of enabling school structure is developed. Then, six high schools, which were determined to have enabling structures in a large quantitative study of Ohio schools, were analyzed in depth using…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to present a case study of an HRD team from the UK that delivers training to a large public service Hungarian organization with the aid of interpreters and translators. Design/methodology/approach: The article takes the form of a case study. Findings: The article acts to illustrate good and ineffective…

This article presents findings from a comparative case study of the learning experiences of two graduate students in an online action research course. The key roles played by reflection and co-reflection, an emerging concept, are identified through the use of narrative analysis. Co-reflection is a collaborative critical thinking process mediated…

This paper describes an evaluation of a web-based consultation space (a dynamic frequently asked questions environment--DFAQ) in which learners consult one another using questions, and in which both the flow of interaction and its artefacts become a resource available to a community of learners. The DFAQ is a special form of a…

This study was designed to evaluate the use of asynchronous discussion in distance education in terms of student perceptions of its value for learning and for affective support. At the end of the third and sixth years of a distance delivered teacher education programme, students completed a survey to determine the extent to which the nature and…

The purpose of this paper is to better understand how critical pedagogy and multicultural education can help meet the challenges that world language teachers experience in the teaching of culture. The authors believe that eliciting and understanding the voices of foreign language student teachers is essential to help them learn to mediate their…

Elementary teachers engaged in weekly conversations about their students' writing. Conversations were guided by a protocol that began with an assessment of students' writing samples and then moved to the generation of instructional ideas. The conversations were analyzed for what the teachers talked about and the extent to which they generated…

Support is needed to promote problem-based learning (PBL) and to enhance critical thinking skills in discussion-based Internet forums. By advancing the capabilities of chat room and forum software, problem-based discussions for learning can be supported further in online learning environments. In this paper, the authors report on MALESAbrain, an…

This paper reports on a study of computer-mediated communication within the context of a distance MA in TEFL programme which used an e-mail discussion list and then a discussion board. The study focused on the computer/Internet access and skills of the target population and their CMC needs and wants. Data were collected from 63 questionnaires and…

This study is concerned with possible relationships between general foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA), foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA), gender, extended overseas experience, and classroom performance. Versions of previously published measurement scales (the FLCAS and the FLRAS) were administered to three different groups in nine…

This paper reports on a questionnaire survey carried out in the first and last classes of a single semester English "conversation" class at a national university in Japan. While the time frame is obviously limited, the project focuses on changes in attitude to using the Learners' Mother Tongue displayed by students with regards to use by…

TeamXchange, an online team-based exercise, is described. TeamXchange is consistent with the collaborative model of learning and provides a means of fostering enhanced student learning and engagement through collaboration in virtual teams experiencing periodic membership changes. It was administered in an undergraduate Organizational Behavior…

We examined how mother-child emotional reminiscing is affected by culture, gender, and the valence of the event. Thirty-one Euro-American and 30 Chinese middle-class mothers and their 3-year-old children discussed 1 highly positive and 1 highly negative experience. Mothers and children in both cultures used a greater variety of negative emotion…

Returning tests following an examination is often a difficult task for the instructor, particularly in courses that are perceived by students as anxiety producing. The purpose of this article is to offer suggestions for designing this class session so that students view it as a positive part of the learning process. The four phases suggested for…