This paper presents findings from empirical study on assessing third year students' academic performance and development of generic skills through participatory teaching. Generic skills inventory and academic performance were utilized as measuring instruments where as activities of participatory learning used as an independent variable. The main…

With the dramatic rise of diversity in American schools, the need to prepare teachers to work with this population, and the increasing popularity of online instruction, teacher educators and researchers need to pay greater attention to the effects of online instruction. This study examines and compares the impact of a critical multicultural…

The purpose of this study was to research the effect of the rubric on the level of learners' cognitive engagement and to explore the effectiveness of Web-based concurrent discussions experienced by learners. The participants were 20 undergraduate students of D Women's University and they were divided into six groups for concurrent discussions in…

This paper describes and analyzes a Debate-Discussion Learning Project designed to foster student engagement with the subject matter and each other in reflective and analytical dialogues. This project is a significant component of a course, The Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement, which has a major goal of understanding how the legacy of racial…

Although educators believe in the importance of dialogue and dialogic encounters, and often propose to engage their students in "discussion," dialogic communication is rarely used in the classroom. Rather than through relational and substantive conversation, most educational dialogue in public schools is limited to telling, asking one-way…

The author, a 5th-grade teacher, offers strategies intended to assist and encourage ELL students to participate in academic conversations. They include insisting that children take part in conversations despite their apprehension and teaching them the language they need to communicate their ideas. One strategy is Think, Pair, Share--a simple…

Research consistently demonstrates the benefits of employing classroom discussions; however, there has been less attention given to teaching students about discussions. The current research compared 2 advanced social psychology courses: 1 without (control) and 1 with (experimental) a week devoted to learning about and discussing discussions.…

Columbia University offers two innovative undergraduate science-based bioethics courses for student majoring in biosciences and pre-health studies. The goals of these courses are to introduce future scientists and healthcare professionals to the ethical questions they will confront in their professional lives, thus enabling them to strategically…

This article describes the implementation of the cogenerative dialogue (cogen) method in a community college chemistry course. Descriptions of the cogen method and the context of the chemistry course are offered. Results from selected cogen sessions and changes made to instruction are summarized, as well as those for students' performances on…

Demonstrating is a traditional method in teaching science that can raise interest and encourage pupils to think about a topic. While demonstrating, the teacher can focus the pupils' attention on the relevant facts and introduce scientific principles and concepts. Through discussion and actively making observations and inferences, rather than…

A group facilitation technique called World Café usually involves dividing a large number of people into smaller groups at tables, exploring a variety of topics around a key focus, and collecting ideas from the discussions to debrief later as a large group. We used a modified version of World Café during the new Cracker Barrel session format at…

Previous research indicates the importance of self-efficacy beliefs for young children's learning and achievement. However, the challenge has been to research young children's self-efficacy in authentic learning situations. Therefore, the aims of this study were to investigate young children's immediate experiences of confidence in…

This study investigated the influence of professional development on 20 preschool teachers' use of instructional conversations in classrooms for 2- to 5-year-old children. Instructional conversation is a small group discussion that builds on children's prior knowledge to assess and assist conceptual understanding. Over a 3-year period, the…

This article presents data from a mixed-methods study that collected data through surveys (n = 656), interviews (n = 15), and discussion groups (n = 75) to explore the use of social strategies such as education and outreach by non-governmental organizations and government agencies to reach outcomes related to biodiversity conservation and resource…

Many faculty interpret student responses to faculty questions as evidence of an actively engaged classroom. Because of this conviction, class participation, whether graded or ungraded, appears in many course syllabi in colleges and universities and is often promoted as the responsibility of students to contribute to the learning environment. Class…