The post-world war II American social and cultural setting was ambiguously featured with enforced conformity in the name of prosperity and Americanization of the nation. Despite of this fact, American writers, especially, dramatists conveyed their message against this fixation through variety and intellectuality. Edward Albee's "The Zoo…

This article has arisen from a study involving teachers in an early childhood centre and their responses to being introduced to schema learning theory. As a former practitioner in early childhood education and in my current role in initial teacher education, I have an interest in cognitive constructivist learning theories from both developmental…

How children learn to read is a controversial matter. Since the teaching of literacy has always been a major purpose of schooling, pedagogy and teaching methods have generally framed research and practice. Psychologists and linguists have played a major role in determining what we mean by "literacy learning". Although they disagree on…

Safety net programs emerging from the War on Poverty and later antipoverty efforts such as Head Start, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), among others have reduced poverty, and strengthened longer-term outcomes for poor children, leading to better health and greater economic…

In prior studies, we examined Collective Classroom Efficacy (CCE) through the role of teacher and through the voices of students in a diverse classroom developing CCE. One participant exhibited an element of hope that added to her learning experience. Through Lara's telling case, we illustrate how she accomplished her goals through interactions…

The authors draw on their own experiences as practitioners, one as a Biology and Agriculture teacher in Kenya, and the other as an educator in a summer science program serving African American youth in a city in the Midwestern United States. They document and analyze moments of language contestation and explore the use of the construct of…

This paper aims at examining the extent to which the English drama inspired by the Northeastern Thai folklore "Pachit-Oraphim" in an English classroom can reduce high school students' classroom anxiety in speaking English. The participants were thirty-six students in the tenth and eleventh grades, who were enrolled in an English class…

This study contributes to the emerging research literature on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) support and persistence activities among urban teenage African American and Latina girls. We present three case studies of girls who participated in an afterschool STEM curriculum. Our within- and cross-case analyses focused on…

Recent literature on the use of exemplars in the context of higher education has shown that exemplar-based instruction is implemented in various disciplines; nevertheless, how exemplar-based instruction can be implemented in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing classrooms in higher education institutions remains under-explored. In this…

A conception of social testing is described in which students are directed to give themselves grades at two moments: first, after filling in answers that they recall alone; second, after asking others in the class for mediating help during social interaction. The first grade is an estimate of individual efforts, without social connections. The…

The significance of feedback in the learning process, including that in second language (L2) writing pedagogy has been widely recognized. Many studies investigating the effect of feedback on students' writing have indicated that the feedback process helps students improve their writing quality. However, few studies exist that focus on how the…

This article describes Children's Museum of Pittsburgh's multi-phase approach to developing professional development (PD) for its maker educators. Researchers engaged maker educator staff in research-practice partnerships at each stage of the process, with the intention of supporting maker educators in developing their practice. Grounded in…

The centrality of service learning in the development of students' professional practice has received worldwide attention. Exposure to appropriately designed service learning experience determines the acquisition of graduate attributes. This article addresses a study in which the key question was: What methods and strategies do students and their…

This article presents an argument and commentary about the concomitant effects of codification, meritocracy and performativity in the academic performance of a cohort of black African Foundation Phase Bachelor of Education degree students at a previously predominantly white institution of higher learning. The objective of this paper is to…

Partnerships between teachers and parents from nondominant communities hold promise for reducing race- and class-based educational disparities, but the ways families and teachers work together often fall short of delivering systemic change. Racialized institutional scripts provide "taken-for-granted" norms, expectations, and assumptions…