Background: For the last century, the dominant practice in U.S. high schools has involved sorting students by perceived ability level, yet 40 years of research has yielded consistent evidence that these practices harm the learning of students placed in lower-level classes; evidence is inconsistent about benefits for students in classes designated…

We study the Tutoring Online Program (TOP), where: (i) tutoring is entirely online; (ii) tutors are volunteer university students, matched with underprivileged middle school students. We leverage random assignment to estimate effects during and after the pandemic (2020 and 2022), investigating channels of impact. Three hours of individual tutoring…

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has increasingly made advances across various fields, including ELT. In this article we embrace an egalitarian dialogue framework to explore and understand the role of AI in language education. This format provides a useful backdrop for navigating the dual responses--enthusiasm and scepticism--by which…

Differentiated instruction has emerged as a research-based approach to teaching that meets the diverse needs of students based upon learner readiness, interests, and learning profile, grounded in the socio-cultural, multiple intelligences, and brain-based learning theories. The purpose of this basic qualitative inquiry was to explore teachers'…

This study explores the potential of virtual communities of practice (vCoPs) in fostering leadership growth that aligns with the diverse needs and challenges faced by school principals. The study employs a qualitative research design, and conducts semi-structured interviews with 16 school principals from K-12 schools belonging to the Gulf…

This paper proposes a personalized teaching strategy based on Total Physical Response (TPR) to acquire new words. TPR combines target language items with semantically corresponding gestures conducive to learners understanding and memorizing them by repeatedly executing commands from their teachers. One limitation of TPR is that it does not allow…

Korean English medium instruction (EMI) classes aim to foster active discussions and communicative interactions in English between instructors and students. However, many Korean students in these classes struggle due to their limited English proficiency. This paper examines the challenges faced by Korean EFL students in EMI environments,…

The field of autonomous language learning in second language acquisition has experienced significant growth since its introduction by Holec in the 1980s. Several studies have explored how to promote learning autonomy in various spaces, including online learning environments. However, research related to autonomous language learning in online…

Differentiation has gained widespread acceptance across the Ontario policy community as a mechanism that can improve the overall quality of the PSE system. Though much has been said locally about the supposed benefits of differentiation, including its ability to reduce programme duplication and boost institutional efficiency, little attention has…

There is a recent advocacy for students to experience their learning as personalised, but this expectation poses challenges for teachers tasked with addressing prescribed curricula. In this article, we draw on relevant literature and our analyses of three case studies to propose a framework within which teachers can achieve both goals. We first…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. The term relational suasion describes a common, human phenomenon: a person is open to guidance from someone he trusts. Any relationship of trust has this potential, and within formal education, it describes a student's openness to a…

Current initiatives to personalize learning in schools, while seen as a contemporary reform, actually continue a 200+ year struggle to provide scalable, mass, public education that also addresses the variable needs of individual learners. Indeed, some of the rhetoric and approaches reformers are touting today sound very familiar in this historical…

The mathematics performance of students identified with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) is poor. Students identified with EBD require individualized instruction aligned with their unique academic and behavioral needs. One way that teachers can efficiently identify core mathematics deficits and provide individualized instruction is through…

It is well accepted that not only the ability but also the positive disposition of teachers towards various teaching practices (including differentiated teaching) can be largely traced back to their initial education and training. Therefore, the beliefs and experiences of future teachers for planning and implementing differentiated teaching…

When discussing mobile learning (or M-Learning), many educators tend to focus on the affordances of the technology. In this article, the authors feature the M-Learning Framework as a way to view the effective use of mobile devices. The framework includes three key features: (1) authenticity; (2) personalization; and (3) collaboration. These…