As education continues to integrate technological advancements into learning and instruction, a resource dedicated to the latest findings and implications becomes necessary. This handbook provides academicians, researchers, and practitioners with a comprehensive view of the historical, conceptual, theoretical, and practical perspectives of…

This paper attempts to unpack the teaching and learning experiences of academics and students when a new way of teaching radiation physics was introduced. In an attempt to articulate the University of Wollongong's commitment to the enhancement of the teaching/research nexus and to the development of learning communities, staff of the School of…

One goal of project-based science is to promote the development of scientific discourse communities in classrooms. Holding rich high school scientific discussions is challenging, especially when the demands of content and norms of high school science pose challenges to their enactment. There is little research on how high school teachers enact…

"The Learning System" is a newsletter designed for superintendents and central office staff with professional learning responsibilities. This issue includes: (1) District Pulls Together in Pursuit of Excellence: Creating Collaboration Systemwide Requires Commitment (Valerie von Frank); (2) Scheduling Time for Teacher Learning Is Key for…

There has been extensive reporting on the interactional characteristics of multi-participant text-based chat rooms. In these chat rooms there are several students typing at the same time, often on more than one topic. As a result, it is not uncommon to see multiple overlapping utterances. Despite these communicative challenges, research suggests…

In this article we suggest that online environments can function as alternate "organizations" for pre-service and beginning teachers who may find themselves struggling in schools. Building on prior work on framing and reframing in organizations and schools, the authors present a new frame of analysis specifically geared for web-based…

The concept of dialogue is often examined apart from the social and historical context in which it is embedded. This paper identifies how dialogue between a superior and a subordinate generates a reorganisation of situated knowledge in the education and training of nurse teachers. We created an analytic method of supervisory discourse founded on…

This article reports the findings of a study examining the social/discursive construction of an author (Brenda Dervin) by an international community of researchers (information behavior researchers). A crucial conceptual starting point for the study was Michel Foucault's work on the discursive construction of power/knowledge. The study represents…

This article presents an interview with Frank Pajares, an internationally recognized scholar in the field of motivation and self-efficacy. During the interview, Pajares talked about William James, what he learned from reading "The Little Prince," his self-efficacy beliefs, and his famous speech wherein he spoke of God, the Devil, and solving the…

In this article, Laurinda Brown and Alf Coles relate to each other their own observations from each other's teaching styles. Brown relates that she was quite unsuccessful when she used Cole's strategy of using chanting when she introduced the Gattegno chart to her class. She realizes that could have raised the level of complexity of her lessons to…

Even with President Barack Obama's promises to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and withdraw troops from Iraq, the subject of torture keeps making the news. With all that detainees have had to endure during their incarcerations--the recent memos detail stress positions, cramped confinement, and waterboarding, among other tactics--perhaps…

Despite the wealth of studies on smaller learning communities (SLCs), student voices are missing from the debate on high school reform. This article examines how students experience SLCs. A participatory research method, data-in-a-day was used to provide a systematic and inclusive method for gathering data on student perceptions. Data-in-a-day is…

Describing the emergence of the first shipbuilding texts, particularly those in English provides another chapter in the story of the emergence of English technical writing. Shipwrightery texts did not appear in English until the middle decades of the seventeenth century because shipwrightery was a closed discourse community which shared knowledge…

As teachers and leaders are well aware, schools and districts across the country have invested enormous amounts of money and energy in creating data management systems so that teachers can access information about their students' performance. With these systems in place, the focus now needs to move to the structures and allocation of time that…

It is a challenge for schools with large populations of students from low-income, migrant, and international families to ensure that every student reaches proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic assessments. Traditionally, schools across the country have tended to cope with this challenge by offering a…