Lab components of undergraduate science courses typically have students complete highly directed cookbook-like laboratory activities. These experiences rarely engage students in a meaningful manner and do not accurately convey what the work of science entails. With funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), we have created more…

This research paper is framed by concerns about recent UK Government policy regarding the training of mathematics and science teachers in England and discusses how two cohorts of pre-service teachers negotiated the development of a professional identity while undertaking subject-specific training. The data reported upon were garnered in two ways;…

While the benefits of online group work completed using asynchronous CMC technology is documented, researchers have identified a number of challenges that result in ineffective and unsuccessful online group work. Fewer channels of communication and lack of immediacy when compared to face-to-face group work are a few of the noted limitations. Thus,…

This paper presents a qualitative investigation on key skills for co-learning and co-inquiry in the digital age. The method applied was cyber-ethnography with asynchronous observation (forum and wiki) and synchronous discussions (webconference) for analysing skills developed by a co-learning community. This study focuses on participants from…

In today's globalized, connected world, fixed and stable identities are increasingly uncommon. The means and modes of online communication and engagement, themselves powerful contributors to identity formation, are likewise in a constant state of flux. Participating in emerging online communities may require users to develop new skills, acquire…

This article, with the aim of identifying elements that constitute the characteristics of an academic space within comparative education, analyzes how comparative education has been discussed and practiced in Japan, based on a questionnaire completed by 264 members of the Japan Comparative Education Society and classification of articles published…

This paper documents a study investigating co-construction of knowledge by doctoral students in an online learning community. In this study 12 students participated in the coursework and thesis proposal development stages of a doctoral program offered by a research-intensive university in New Zealand. Socio-cultural and social constructivist…

The author discusses how teachers can measure their effectiveness and discusses three frameworks they can use to do so: the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards's Core Propositions, Robert J. Marzano's Teacher Evaluation Model, and John Hattie's eight mind frames. She also gives examples from her own experience to show how she…

Arizona Online Instruction (AOI) provided an instructional alternative to nearly fifty thousand K-12 students in Arizona during the 2012-2013 school year. Growth in online education underscores the importance of evolving the role of the K-12 virtual teacher as the human agent (Turvey, 2008) demonstrating social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) by…

This Record of Study summarizes my journey in the program and my investigation of the problem of improving mathematics instruction. The exploration of the problem space spanned three years before culminating in the problem statement. Using a positive deviance approach and understanding the values of stakeholders narrowed the scope of the problem…

Agency, defined by Gao (2013) as learners' "dynamic strategic behavior" (p. 29) in response to contextual realities, has been central to educational undertakings. While the affordances of social networking sites like Facebook have been extensively examined in a number of educational studies, there has been a scarcity of research on…

Graduate teaching assistants (TAs) and the general education yet discipline-specific courses they often teach occupy a complex peripheral position in the university. This qualitative comparative case study investigated disciplinary TAs' identities and pedagogical strategies as they taught writing courses linked with disciplinary lecture courses at…

This research is an exploratory study that evaluates the affordances of WeChat for the development of a community of inquiry (CoI) in semi-synchronous language exchange supported by WeChat. WeChat is an instant messenger that facilitates a multimodal environment in which interaction can happen synchronously, semi-synchronously and asynchronously…

With the advancement in technology, learners are spending a substantial amount of time on online learning. Guided by the community of inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 1999), this study examined the relationships among students' perceived teaching element, social element, cognitive element, satisfaction, continuous…

How does participation in nonformal learning influence the self-perceived well-being among older adults? This article looks into that issue through a study of people aged 65 years or older who have participated in Swedish study circles. The data analyzed consists of a nation-wide survey of study circle participants. The results show that there are…