The purpose of this paper is to investigate how explanation is interactively constituted in two mathematics instructional sequences during one year-long teaching experiment in a second grade classroom. The position taken is that classroom norms for what constitutes an acceptable explanation are a joint construction between teacher and students.…

Noting that hearing and reading the words of real people can personalize for students the study of social studies, language arts, and science, this book presents 230 quotations and prompts to enrich curricula and themes in grades 4 through 8. After an introduction and advice on using quotations in the classroom, quotations and prompts in the book…

In 1996, the Metropolitan Community Colleges (Missouri) participated in the American Association of Community Colleges' Exploring America's Communities project, which works to strengthen the teaching and learning of American history, literature, and culture at U.S. community colleges. The colleges' team formulated a humanities course exploring the…

This paper examines the reactions of 10 elementary teachers to a teaching case used as part of a professional development project's curriculum. Their written reactions to both reading the case and participating in a 2-hour discussion of it suggest that cases may stimulate teachers to think about their own understanding of mathematics, the…

Four teachers, two from a rural high school and two from an urban one, spent a year trying to get students to examine similarities and differences between the two schools. The exchange program involved students from Malcolm X Shabazz High School of Newark, New Jersey and a group from rural New Jersey's Hunterdon Central High. Small groups of…

This booklet is part of a series designed to help students take and defend a position on public issues. This unit examines the topic of immigration. Lessons encourage students to engage in discussions that touch on ethical, definitional, and factual questions alike. The first unit, "The Immigrant Experience," presents the stories of…

The public's reaction to the television film "The Day After" demonstrates that when television responsibly and sensitively presents a controversial yet thought-provoking issue, an educational and enlightening experience can result. The film was developed and produced by ABC Motion Pictures to inspire debate and discussion about the…

Designed to show teachers how to create environments that will encourage literate talk, not discourage it, this book discusses ways to organize classrooms that will support the sharing of books in the same way that book-loving families share books. The book builds on the interwoven nature of language, suggesting that by talking about books,…

The purpose of this guide is to help study circle leaders design a study circle course and develop the reading material for the discussions. Benefits for the participants and the sponsoring organization are discussed. Three issues in planning the study circle program are addressed: goals, participants, and time frame. Key characteristics of…

Successful learning in a discursive interaction demands that participants be able to follow the interaction from its beginning to its end; instruction on Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALNs) poses challenges because, unlike in face-to-face interaction, not all messages are serial. This paper offers strategies and techniques to help ALN teachers…

Academics spend most of their intellectual lives engaged in theoretically complex and sometimes arcane debates, and it is sometimes easy for them to forget that their students are being introduced for the first time to many of the concepts they as educators take for granted. In political science courses, a variety of group activities can serve the…

This paper urges the use of case study discussions in the organizational communication class as an effective instructional technique. The paper presents a variety of formats for bringing case studies to life for students in the organizational communication course. It first discusses sources for case studies such as the World Wide Web, local and…

The use of the feature film "12 Angry Men" (1957) as an integrative review of social psychology is described. Students view the film, and then discuss the many aspects of social psychology represented in the interactions among the jurors. Discussion involves tying the movie examples back to social psychological research and theory as…

A pilot study investigated whether a short training program increased the number of questions involving higher level thinking used by preservice teachers in teaching fiction. Subjects, 22 students enrolled in an elementary reading methods course in a state university in the Northwest, completed pre- and posttests and the training program during…

Introducing students to the assumptions, values, and complexity involved in implicit and explicit agreements between individuals, this book presents 34 situations which students are asked to examine and then draw conclusions and make decisions based on the information given. The situations presented in the book include agreements, understandings,…