One of the most important challenges a teacher faces is motivating his or her students to complete reading assignments and to complete them carefully. After all, if students bring to class a basic understanding of the text up for discussion, much deeper learning can occur than if the teacher is forced to spend time explaining the reading to…

As a marketing analyst, Eric is faced with several ethical dilemmas. When asked to engage in unethical and illegal behavior, Eric must decide whether to obey his boss and fudge the numbers (the counts of product purchased in order to get reimbursed more from the manufacturer during special sales) or take the ethical route. The case consists of two…

Professional vision helps the teacher decide where to focus attention and what interactions are most critical at the moment. Despite the importance of teachers' professional vision, the authors find that teachers do not always have opportunities to reflect on and further develop their professional vision. During instruction, a student's comment or…

This special series represents collective courage because what is willing to be risked may be profound. At center is a willingness to reach out and cultivate new conversations on disability. Indeed, the artists who contribute to Ware's article are key co-authors; their art ushers us into a new disability literacy that extends and challenges…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on findings related to the use of a large group intervention method known as The World Cafe. Design/methodology/approach: The intervention method and its philosophical genesis are described, along with lessons learned from observation, personal use, and interviews with cafe participants. Findings:…

When PhD students complain it is assumed there are problems and that troubles talk is evidence of a "sick" research candidature or culture. This paper argues that such a one-dimensional reading fails to attend closely to the academic identity work that is done when students talk together. Identity work has become a useful way of thinking about the…

Virtual worlds open new possibilities for learners, prompting a reconsideration of how learning takes place, and setting education in a context of playfulness, delight and creativity. They provide environments in which it is not only possible but also necessary to generate and try out ideas. They therefore offer opportunities to explore new…

Students' observations about society often become the basis for class discussions in Peter Cipparone's fourth-grade classroom. As Chip Wood, an expert on child development, observed, nine-year-olds are often "struggling with the cognitive task of understanding ethical behavior at a new level." One of this author's goals…

Using errors as a method of learning has been made explicit through a two-staged peer review and discussion. During organic chemistry discussion sessions, quizzes are followed by a structured peer review designed to help students identify and discuss student errors. After the face-to-face discussion, a second stage of review involves analyzing and…

For most students in the introductory World Civilization I course that Courtney Luckhardt teaches online, this is likely their first (and perhaps only) university history course. Persuading students that history is valuable, even just for the skills they need in critical reading and writing, is a difficult task. It is harder still when they view…

This study focuses on improving teacher feedback during active learning. Changing teachers' behavior sustainably, however, is very difficult. Several conditions should be taken into account, and programs should build on teachers' cognitions and practices. Effects of a specifically designed professional development program on 16 elementary…

The aim of this study was to determine the salient beliefs of pre-service primary school teachers (PPSTs) about why they like or dislike physics and to explore whether these beliefs predict their teaching beliefs about physics. A total of 267 PPSTs (Male = 137, Female = 130) participated in the study. Qualitative data analyses were used and the…

In an effort to improve our understanding of intellectual discussion in the undergraduate seminar and how it may be enhanced, three interdisciplinary discussion-based classes taken by primarily first-year students at a liberal arts college were studied ethnographically. Specifically, this article explores the struggles experienced by the students…

Collaborative games will enable new kinds of possibilities for learning. In the future, the goal of game-based learning should be to introduce new ideas and deepen learners' in-depth understanding. However, studies have shown that shared high-level knowledge construction is a challenging process. Moreover, thus far, few empirical studies have…

Chat conversations and other types of online communication environments are widely used within CSCL educational scenarios. However, there is a lack of theoretical and methodological background for the analysis of collaboration. Manual assessing of non-moderated chat discussions is difficult and time-consuming, having as a consequence that learning…