This article explores the social-psychological process of identity negotiation in collaborative teaching, using Erving Goffman's (1959) theoretical tradition of dramaturgy to analyze the classroom itself as a performance venue. A dramaturgical analysis of collaborative teaching is especially significant given this growing pedagogical trend because…

The data discussed in this paper is drawn from research conducted in a multilingual urban primary school in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the official language of instruction is English and the majority of learners are African language speakers, frequently with very limited English proficiency. The paper presents a case study of one child who…

This study explores what classroom behaviors and activities in the basic speech course contribute to student connectedness. The results indicate that student encouragement, humor, honesty, interactive exercises and individual speeches, can help student bonding and motivation, and impacts their overall college experience.

Corpus consultation is gaining in prominence as a language learning tool. This approach to language analysis has made its way into the language classroom where its presence ranges from the presentation of printed concordance data with accompanying tasks to the direct use of concordancing software by learners themselves to carry out analyses of…

Science classrooms in the United States have become more diverse with respect to the variety of languages spoken by students. This qualitative study used ethnographic methods to investigate the discourse and practices of two ninth grade science classrooms. Approximately 44% of students included in the study were designated as English learners. The…

The need to increase US competitiveness in the world economy is a driving factor in the recent push to internationalize university campuses across the country. Technical and subject area expertise are no longer sufficient to succeed in the 21st-century global workplace. Intercultural competence is becoming more valued as part of the desired…

As educators, we have two missions. First, we must serve our students--they are both our customer and our product. Second, we aim to provide the market in general with graduates with relevant skills and knowledge for jobs that have not even been created yet. Given that most students graduating and moving into the workplace are not necessarily…

Humor means understanding not only the language and words but their use, meaning, subtle nuances, the underlying culture, implications and unwritten messages. Humor does not often travel well from one culture to another, as each society has a somewhat different concept of what is funny (Dobson, 1987). In Foreign Language Learning (FLL), the…

Oral histories are an exciting way to directly involve students in the act of historical inquiry. They assist students in personalizing history and relating to the actual lives behind major events, names, and dates in history. This article discusses the benefits of using oral histories in the classroom. It describes how to use "Oral Histories…

Long before the first day of class, students have preconceived notions about what a communication research methods class will consist of: mathematics, incomprehensible topics, boring content, and overall agony. These notions automatically make a research methods instructors' job quite difficult (Denham, 1997). Not only do they have to explain…

Students need to have basic understanding of scientific method during their introductory science classes and for this purpose an activity was devised which involved a game based on famous Monty Hall game problem. This particular activity allowed students to banish or confirm their intuition based on empirical evidence.

This story of a student's misconceptions about quadrilateral properties makes a case for the importance of teachers not only knowing where their students have been and where they are in terms of their learning, but also where their current learning will lead them in the future. Suggested classroom activities are included. (Contains 8 figures.)

The author describes how to conceptualize and organize a successful, multi-day field trip organized around a case study problem. By doing so, the instructor exposes students to diverse perspectives and leads them through the process of policy analysis from collecting and organizing information to identifying the relevant economic concepts and…

Nearly 20 years after the release of The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics' video, "A Private Universe", much research has been done in relation to students' understanding of space-science concepts and how to effectively change these ideas. However, student difficulties with basic space-science concepts still persist. This article will…

Picturebook readalouds have been promoted as a rich resource for strengthening literacy development in young children and discussions of picturebooks have become a common--if threatened--practice in the primary grades. One subset of the diverse body of children's literature teachers can draw from is picturebooks with sparse verbal text. Such…